Seeing eye to eye: organizational behaviour,brokering and building trust in Tanzania

The focus of this article is organizational behaviour in and around the private sector in Tanzania at a time of transition through liberalization and the promotion of private sector activity; how the private sector has re‐emerged in the very recent past; how it operates as a group or, more accurately, as a set of groups, and the relationships between its component parts and with other development organizations (notably public actors: the state and aid donors). Within this framework our interest is in how organizational behaviour is mediated and trust is built through the brokering of relations between different organizations which intersect the public and private (and what this means for the public sphere). The article assesses the usefulness of a three‐level framework for analysing organizational and institutional transformation, shows that some tentative but modest change is occurring, and that a range of incomplete but positive political processes are happening. We show that institutional development is the weak link in these processes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

This article presents a systematic literature review of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in the public sector. The findings show that although OCB is gaining more attention in the public sector, research often does not take specific public sector characteristics or concepts into account. Based on the available evidence, the authors develop a framework of antecedents, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of OCB. Three areas for future research are recommended: (1) regarding theory: link OCB to public sector concepts such as bureaucratic red tape, public leadership, and public service motivation; (2) regarding research designs: use stronger survey designs, experiments, and case studies and devote more attention to cross-sectoral and cross-country differences; and (3) regarding the consequences of OCB: address the gap in our knowledge of how OCB has an impact on public organizations, including negative impacts.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Strategies of Influence: How Interest Organizations React to Changes in Parliamentary Influence and Activity1

Research has shown that interest organizations seeking influence on public decision making pay increasing attention to parliamentary actors. No distinction has, however, been made between attempts to affect law-making directly and attempts to gain influence on other parliamentary activities such as agenda setting and control of bureaucracy. Drawing on data about organizational approaches to the Danish parliament, this article demonstrates that interest organizations’ influence strategies in relation to different parliamentary activities show dissimilar patterns. Strategies in regard to law-making fluctuate with the strength of parliament vis-à-vis the government, while strategies concerned with more general parliamentary activities depend more on the level of these activities and secondarily on increases in parliamentary resources. The analysis thus confirms that organizations react to changes in the political role of parliament, but takes the understanding of this a step further by emphasizing that changes in direct parliamentary influence on law-making and in more general parliamentary activities affect different aspects of organizations’ influence strategies.     

The Link Between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Differences Between Public and Private Sector Employees

ABSTRACT

Employees in the public and private sectors experience different working conditions and employment relationships. Therefore, it can be assumed that their attitudes toward their job and organizations, and relationships between them, are different. The existing literature has identified the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction as interesting in this context. The present field study examines the satisfaction–commitment link with respect to differences between private and public sector employees. A sample of 617 Greek employees (257 from the private sector and 360 from the public sector) completed standardized questionnaires. Results confirmed the hypothesized relationship differences: Extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are more strongly related to affective commitment and normative commitment for public sector employees than for private sector ones. The results are discussed, limitations are considered, and directions for future research are proposed.     

Stability and change in the public’s policy agenda: a punctuated equilibrium approach

Much research within the punctuated equilibrium framework demonstrated that policy agendas are invariably punctuated, due in part to cognitive and institutional frictions that constitute barriers to change in attention. While the bulk of past scholarship explored the extent to which institutional friction varies by organizational design, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the empirical examination of the cognitive aspect of disproportionate information processing. In an attempt to close this gap, I utilize a newly available dataset that codes nearly a million Americans’ responses to the ‘most important problem’ question from 1939 to 2015 to analyze the distribution of annual changes in the policy priorities of the American public. Drawing on the punctuated equilibrium theory literature, I argue and show that punctuations in the public’s policy priorities are more severe and frequent than those in institutional agendas. These results emphasize the need for a more subtle treatment of disproportionate information processing within the public, calling for relaxing the implicit assumption that cognitive friction is constant within organizations and across issues.

     

Is There a Nonprofit Advantage? Examining the Impact of Institutional Context on Individual–Organizational Value Congruence

This article addresses an important question: do nonprofit organizations have an advantage over public organizations in fostering individual–organizational value congruence? The authors argue that nonprofit organizations do have an advantage. This is because institutional differences between the two sectors become manifest through nonprofit status and the extent of external control, which influences the organization and the individual. External control and sector status (nonprofit versus public) determine the extent of centralization, organizational goal ambiguity, and work autonomy. In turn, these three organizational characteristics shape individual–organizational value congruence. Although the results provide support for the nonprofit advantage thesis, it is worth noting that organizational effects on individual–organizational value congruence are more powerful. Indeed, the results suggest that managerial and organizational actions, compared with sector status, are more likely to influence individual–organizational value congruence.     

Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1     

Collaborative Innovation: A Viable Alternative to Market Competition and Organizational Entrepreneurship

There are growing pressures for the public sector to be more innovative but considerable disagreement about how to achieve it. This article uses institutional and organizational analysis to compare three major public innovation strategies. The article confronts the myth that the market‐driven private sector is more innovative than the public sector by showing that both sectors have a number of drivers of as well as barriers to innovation, some of which are similar, while others are sector specific. The article then systematically analyzes three strategies for innovation: New Public Management, which emphasizes market competition; the neo‐Weberian state, which emphasizes organizational entrepreneurship; and collaborative governance, which emphasizes multiactor engagement across organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. The authors conclude that the choice of strategies for enhancing public innovation is contingent rather than absolute. Some contingencies for each strategy are outlined.     

Privatization,regulation and development: Some questions of training strategy

In the current debate over the role of the public sector and its effective and efficient management, too little attention has been paid to the training implications of the various policy options. These include privatization as well as public enterprise performance improvement and rehabilitation. Third world training institutions are only just beginning to respond to the new tasks of re-equipping public sector managers to enable them to play a more ‘enabling’ or ‘facilitating’ role vis-à-vis the private and parastatal sectors. Accordingly, this article suggests a number of major elements that need go into any national training effort to strengthen the government-enterprise interface, including some of the curricular content, needs for case and teaching materials, developing training methods, the role of research, possibilities of a regional approach and the role of the international donor community.     

Bureaucracy as an issue in Third World management: An African case study

Organizational theory has been of surprisingly limited value in illuminating the problems of public sector management in the Third World. One reason for this is the ideal-typical bias of most studies of Third World management. This has led to an emphasis on assumed optimal performance criteria to the detriment of an understanding of how Third World organizations actually perform. The case of public sector administration in Liberia is used to illustrate this theme. The major role of administrative incorporation in the stabilization of the Liberian State is established, and consideration given to the ways in which the span of administrative employment and the extent of its popular impact were maximized through the elaboration of an idiosyncratic bureaucratic ideology. Central features of the Liberian bureaucracy are discussedthe over-definition of its external boundary; the weakness of its internal boundaries; the relative insignificance of specialized expert knowledge to bureaucratic roles; and the idiosyncratic nature of the bureaucratic career. While Weberian standards did not apply in the Liberian instance, it cannot be assumed that the latter was therefore a ‘failed bureaucracy’; for the Liberian administration was arguably effective in relation to certain goals, even if these were not ones which would have applied in the ideal-typical case. These goals were essentially political and must be understood in relation to political constraints, rather thanas is often suggested in studies of Third World managementas ‘cultural’ phenomena. Attempts to improve public sector managerial performance in the Third World need to give as much attention to operational issues as to conventional targets.     

The approach of senior public officials to information technology‐related reform: lessons from India

A review of global experience suggests that information technology (IT) has great potential to contribute to public sector reform. However, the Indian reality — like that for many countries — has been more problematic, with many failures of IT‐related reform; failures that can be described as total, partial or failures of sustainability and replication. Many factors help explain such failure, but a key component is the approach to IT and reform adopted by senior public officials. A ‘four Is’ model of approaches is described: the non‐IT approach of ‘ignore’ and the IT‐related approaches of ‘isolate’, ‘idolize’ and ‘integrate’. Analysis of Indian cases suggests that it is the last approach that is most likely to deliver reform objectives; yet it remains the least commonly adopted. Changes are therefore required in current strategies for public administration training and in the planning and management of change. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Educational economies

Contemporary public discussion of and policy formation with respect to higher education pay scant attention to the history and structure of the modern university. In part this is forgivable, since educational historians deal almost exclusively with schooling to the neglect of any wider assessment of formal education within the public sphere. Nonetheless, personal ‘experience’, much less sheer prejudice, is no substitute for an understanding of ‘higher learning’. This review essay considers the outline history provided by Robert Stevens’ From University to Uni and suggests that we are now entering an era of a ‘postmodern’ university whose purposes are both incoherent and implausible.     

Dynamics of Sector Switching: Hazard Models Predicting Changes from Private Sector Jobs to Public and Nonprofit Sector Jobs

Policy makers and public managers emphasize the importance of bringing private sector experience and skills into the public and nonprofit sectors. One result is an increased focus on privatization and contracting out, developments to which researchers have been attentive. However, the long-standing practice of hiring people with industrial experience into the public and nonprofit sectors has received remarkably little attention. This study, based on questionnaire responses from mid- and upper-level personnel in public and nonprofit sector organizations, attempts to understand the dynamics of sector switching from the private into either the public or nonprofit sector. Using event history analysis, the article looks at switching patterns. The probability of switching into the public sector is much higher for those who held a managerial occupation in their previous private sector job than for those who held professional and technical positions. Having more subordinates in a previous private sector job is associated with a lower likelihood of switching into a public sector job. By contrast, switching into the nonprofit sector is more often associated with a promotion.     

Strategic Human Resource Practices: Introducing Alternatives for Organizational Performance Improvement in the Public Sector

Can public sector organizations increase productivity through competition in spite of inherent limitations, such as budget constraints? This study addresses that question by examining the impact of four factors that contribute to employees’ expectations regarding competitive work environments on organizational performance in terms of overall quality of work and client satisfaction. The four factors measured include rewards for merit such as salary and benefits, opportunities, organizational rules, and the capacity to deal with risks as perceived by employees. Using data on public and nonprofit sector employees, expectations for merit rewards were positively related to employees’ perception of organizational performance when the conditions of performance‐based organizational rules and risk‐taking behaviors were also satisfied. Moreover, employees’ perceptions of organizational performance tended to increase when they felt that organizational rules were oriented toward performance plus organizational members and top leaders exhibited greater risk‐taking behaviors. However, no correlation was evident between employees’ expectations of opportunities and perceived organizational performance.     

Institution-building issues in South Africa

This article discusses structural and labour-market factors associated with institution building in South Africa. It pays particular attention to the role of management development in institution building in the public sector. Two case studies that address the question of organizational restructuring following moves towards commercialization of some public sector organizations are discussed.     

Quality awards as a public sector benchmarking concept in OECD member countries: some guidelines for quality award organizers

In many OECD member countries, quality awards have become an important benchmarking instrument for public and especially private sector organizations. Quality awards pursue two main goals: one is to introduce elements of competition in areas of the public and the private sectors that lack of market competition; the other is to encourage organizational learning. The problem is that in a public sector context these aims seem to be mutually exclusive. The aim of the article is to show quality award organizers how to realize the full potential of quality awards by making the appropriate choices in the design of a public sector quality award. The conclusion is that the stage of public sector quality management and the degree of ‘publicness’ of the public sector in a given country will influence the competition‐inducing and learning effect of a national quality award in an adverse way. Nevertheless, the negative effects on one or the other element of quality awards can be counterbalanced by the appropriate choice of the scope of the quality award, the area to be evaluated, the evaluation criteria as well as the benchmarking concept. Last but not least, quality award organizers should keep in mind that quality awards are not a benchmarking instrument for all seasons. Copyright © John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Building sustainable capacity in the public sector: What can be done?

Effective government performance is central to the creation of market-oriented economies, secure and productive populations, and democratic political systems in developing countries. Capacity building to improve public sector performance is thus an important focus of development initiatives. Several implicit assumptions underlie most such efforts: that organizations or training activities are the logical site for capacity-building interventions; that administrative structures and monetary rewards determine organizational and individual performance; that organizations work well when structures and control mechanisms are in place; and that individual performance improves as a result of skill and technology transfer through training activities. Each of these assumptions is called into question by the findings of research carried out in six developing countries and reported in this article. Our studies indicate designing interventions that most constructively address sources of poor performance must follow from an assessment of a relatively broad set of variables, including the action environment in which all such activities take place. We also found that effective public sector performance is more often driven by strong organizational cultures, good management practices, and effective communication networks than it is by rules and regulations or procedures and pay scales. Our case studies further indicate that individual performance is more affected by opportunities for meaningful work, shared professional norms, teamwork, and promotion based on performance rather than it is by training in specific skills. In this article, we describe a framework or conceptual map that emphasizes that training activities, organizational performance and administrative structures are embedded within complex environments that significantly constrain their success and that often account for training or organizational failure. When it was applied in the six case study countries, the framework proved useful in identifying capacity gaps and providing a tool for the strategic design of interventions that are sensitive to the roots of performance deficits. This allows us to conclude that the assumptions underlying many capacity-building initiatives may focus attention on interventions that do not generate the highest payoffs in terms of improved performance.