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.     

Personnel Constraints in Public Organizations: The Impact of Reward and Punishment on Organizational Performance

In recent years, many public sector reforms have attempted to loosen personnel constraints on the assumption that more managerial flexibility will increase organizational performance. The authors mount an empirical study to test this assumption using data taken from English local government authorities. Personnel constraints are operationalized using Rainey's long‐standing measures of the concept. Statistical results from multiple regression analyses indicate that “difficulty in removing poor managers” is harmful to organizational performance, but “difficulty in rewarding good managers” has no effect. The authors delve inside the organizational hierarchy and find that attitudes toward personnel constraints vary by organizational level and managerial rank: for example, frontline managers feel more constrained overall, while senior managers’ perceptions of constraints are more closely linked to organizational performance but in some unexpected ways. The implications of these findings, including the fact that personnel constraints have varying impacts on organizational performance, are considered.     

Core Concepts and Key Ideas for Understanding Public Sector Organizational Networks: Using Research to Inform Scholarship and Practice

This article provides an overview of the key research findings and core concepts on the topic of organizational networks. The primary focus is on goal‐directed “whole” service delivery networks, which are prevalent in the public and nonprofit sectors. The findings and ideas presented are especially salient for helping public managers build, maintain, operate, and govern multiorganizational networks in ways that will enhance their effectiveness. Because research and theory on networks extend well beyond the boundaries of public management and administration, the authors draw on thinking from a number of fields, providing a broad understanding of public networks and network functioning. The article is intended to provide usable information on networks for both practitioners and students, as well as to suggest directions for future research for the many public management scholars who now study organizational networks.     

Performance and Management in the Public Sector: Testing a Model of Relative Risk Aversion

Research has demonstrated that management influences the performance of public organizations, but almost no research has explored how the success or failure of a public organization influences the decisions of those who manage it. Arguing that many decisions by public managers are analogous to risky choice, the authors use a well‐validated model of relative risk aversion to understand how such choices are influenced by managers’ perceptions of organizational performance. They theorize that managers will be less likely to encourage innovation or give discretion to employees when they are just reaching their goals relative to other performance conditions. Analyses of responses to the 2011 and 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys provide considerable support for these assertions. The findings have significant implications for our understanding of the relationship between management and performance in public organizations.     

The Limits to Public Value,or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

In various guises, public value has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. We challenge the relevance and usefulness of the approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorising regimes underpinned by disciplined two‐party systems. We start by spelling out the core assumptions behind the public value approach. We identify two key confusions; about public value as theory, and in defining ‘public managers’. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large‐scale organisations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as Platonic guardians. We then focus on the last two assumptions because they are the least applicable in Westminster systems. We defend the ‘primacy of party politics’ and we criticise the notion that public managers should play the role of Platonic guardians deciding the public interest. The final section of the article presents a ‘ladder of public value’ by which to gauge the utility of the approach for public managers in Westminster systems.     

How Do Performance Gaps Affect Improvement in Organizational Performance? Exploring the Mediating Roles of Proactive Activities

Abstract

According to the extensive literature on performance gaps, the various reference points of the problem identification process affect the managerial decisions of public managers. In this article, we propose a theory about the public management decision-making processes based on the roles of proactive behaviors, specifically regarding how identifying such problems (performance gaps) leads to performance improvement. Using panel data from Korea covering 2005–2014, this analysis provides support for our assertion that not all reference points are equally important to public managers’ proactive responses; however, we find evidence supporting the importance of perceiving the external reference point of problem identification as a significant precedent for successful organizational performance. Our results also indicate that practitioners need to become involved in greater feedback processes when searching for proactive solutions that remedy poor organizational performance. This suggests that the creation of diverse and sophisticated performance feedback systems can strengthen public managers’ abilities to find solutions for organizations. Ultimately, the findings enhance our understanding of the relationship between performance gaps and performance improvement by examining the role of public managers’ proactive behaviors.     

Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance

Despite growing evidence about prosocial motivations and their effects on employee behavior, how can new public service motivation research translate into more effective management practices—which, so far, regrettably remain underdeveloped? Increasingly, public service motivation studies have moved from understanding what motivates public servants to exploring how public service motives influence performance. Similarly, greater attention is now paid to the practices of transformational leadership. Drawing on concepts from transformational leadership, this essay explores how managers can harness the positive aspects of public service motivation to enhance employee and organizational performance and outlines strategies that can help managers incorporate public service motivation values across management systems.     

Capacity,Leadership, and Organizational Performance: Testing the Black Box Model of Public Management

According to recent “black box” models of public management, managerial capacity is a critical component for achieving service delivery improvement. In particular, black box models assume that the impact of management systems is maximized through integration with effective leadership. This assumption is tested by analyzing the effects of managerial capacity and organizational leadership on the performance of English local governments, while controlling for a range of other variables, including organizational size, resources, external constraints, and past performance. Empirical results show that capacity possesses a positive statistical association with local government performance and that leadership can enhance the impact of effective management systems.     

Using Data to Manage for Performance at Public Universities

As performance‐oriented reforms have become more commonplace in recent years, questions about the factors that drive organizational adoption and use of performance systems for internal management are of central importance. This article uses data taken from a survey of presidents at public universities to advance our understanding about the use of data and performance management strategies within public organizations. The central research question is, why do public administrators choose to employ performance management strategies? In addition, the author also explores variation in the extent to which public universities use performance management strategies for three tasks that are central to public management: (1) strategic planning, (2) evaluating employees, and (3) interacting with external stakeholders. Findings indicate that public universities often use performance data to help manage, but many of the causal factors that lead to data use vary across management functions.     

Management Activity and Program Performance: Gender as Management Capital

Do men and women manage differently? Do their efforts have different impacts on public program performance? Building from a formal treatment of public management and performance, this study investigates how the interaction of gender and management strategies influences organizational performance. Focusing on several hundred public organizations and their top managers over a three‐year period, the analysis maps the gender question onto Mark Moore's distinction among managing upward toward political principals, downward toward organizational agents, and outward toward the networked environment. Findings indicate that women and men as top managers have different performance impacts, and these impacts vary by managerial function as well.     

Managerial Ambivalence and Electronic Civic Engagement: The Role of Public Manager Beliefs and Perceived Needs

This article addresses an important yet often neglected component of electronic civic engagement efforts: managerial ambivalence about public participation. We examine how managers’ beliefs about public participation and their perceived needs for participation in agency decision making work together to shape electronic engagement efforts. Based on observational data collected in 2010 and 2014 and data from a 2014 survey of managers in 500 U.S. municipal governments, we find that managerial beliefs about participation and their perceived needs for participation are two valid and separate constructs. There is a positive relationship between managerial beliefs and electronic engagement. Perceived needs for participation interact with managers’ beliefs to affect electronic civic engagement. A high level of perceived needs for participation reinforces the effect of managerial beliefs on electronic engagement efforts, but a low level does not offset the effect of managerial beliefs on electronic engagement.     

Tackling the Performance Regime Paradox: A Problem-Solving Approach Engages Professional Goal-Based Learning

Public performance regimes are bedeviled by a paradox: they must engage the specialized knowledge of professionals who often perceive those very regimes as a threat to their autonomy. The authors use a mixed-method analysis of performance management in Danish hospitals, with separate data for managers and frontline professionals, to offer two insights into this challenge. First, the study shows that managerial behavior—in the form of performance information use—matters to the way frontline professionals engage in goal-based learning. Second, it shows that the way managers use performance data matters. When managers use data in ways that reinforce the perception of performance management as an externally imposed tool of control, professionals withdraw effort. However, when managers use data in ways that solve organizational problems, professionals engage in goal-based learning. The threat to professional values that performance regimes pose can therefore be mitigated by managers using data in ways that complements those values.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

How Should We Estimate the Performance Effect of Management? Comparing Impacts of Public Managers’ and Frontline Employees’ Perceptions of Management

Many areas of public management research are dominated by a top-focused perspective in which emphasis is placed on the notion that managers themselves are usually the best sources of information about managerial behavior. Outside of the leadership literature, managers are also the typical survey respondents in public management studies. An alternative perspective on management can be provided by subordinates’ perceptions of what management is doing. Surveys of subordinates and of managers each pose potential advantages and potential disadvantages when it comes to measuring management, and each approach is likely to prove more fruitful for measuring certain management functions. Using a unique data set of parallel surveys on management with managers and their subordinates as respondents, we examine the differences and relationships between Danish school managers’ and teachers’ perceptions of management functions and the implications of such relationships for organizational performance. We find a surprisingly low correlation between manager and teacher responses regarding the same management functions. Teacher responses are better predictors of student performance for management aspects that are visible to and mediated by teachers. However, manager responses better predict performance for manager expectations that are less visible to employees.     

Perceived Organizational Red Tape and Organizational Performance in Public Services

The claim that perceived organizational red tape hampers public services has become a central theme in public administration research. Surprisingly, however, few scholars have empirically examined the impact of perceived red tape on organizational performance. This article empirically analyzes how perceived organizational red tape among managers and frontline staff relates to objectively measured performance. The data consist of survey responses from teachers and principals at Danish upper secondary schools combined with grade‐level administrative performance data. Based on theories of red tape and motivation crowding, the authors hypothesize that perceived organizational red tape reduces performance within such organizations. The empirical result is a small negative relationship between staff perception of red tape and performance and no relationship between manager‐perceived red tape and performance.     

A Multidimensional Reputation Barometer for Public Agencies: A Validated Instrument

Reputation is of growing interest for the study of public bureaucracies, but a measurement that can discern between the subdimensions of reputation and is validated on real-life audiences has remained elusive. The authors deductively build, test, and cross-validate a survey instrument through two surveys of 2,100 key stakeholders of the European Chemicals Agency, the European Union chemicals regulator. This empirical tool measures an agency's reputation and its building blocks. This scale represents an important contribution to reputation literature, as it allows scholars to distinguish and measure which aspects of reputation public organizations are “known for” and build their claim to authority on, as well as how the profiles of public organizations differ. The authors find that direct stakeholder contact with the agency is necessary for stakeholders to be able to evaluate the separate dimensions of reputation independently. Evidence for Practice

• This study equips practitioners with a reputation barometer tailored to the public sector. It allows them to measure the reputation of their organization, in a differentiated fashion, among different stakeholder groups.
• While public organizations increasingly engage in reputation management activities, a potential caveat that emerges from our exercise is that managers might be steering in non-astute directions. While our study shows that, as for private actors, “performance matters,” procedural and moral aspects also weigh heavily in the eyes of stakeholders when it comes to public regulators.
• To secure a positive organizational image and the authority crucial for public agencies to operate, the performance management turn in the public sector may need to be supplemented by an enhanced organizational attention to procedural and moral aspects.

     

Incentives in Third‐Party Governance: Management Practices and Accountability Implications

Contract incentives are designed to motivate contractor performance and to provide public managers with a powerful tool to achieve contract accountability. Our knowledge of contract incentives is rooted in contract design, yet as we move beyond contract specification and further into the contract lifecycle, we know little about why and how managers implement incentives. This study assesses public managers’ use of contract incentives in practice and advances theory development. A typology of contract incentives is constructed to capture a comprehensive range of formal and informal incentives, and the factors that influence managerial use of incentives are identified. The findings shed light on the complexities of maintaining accountability in third‐party governance structures and the management techniques aimed at improving the performance of public agencies.     

Shaping Public Corporation Leadership in a Turbulent Environment

This article explores how public corporation leadership copes with a turbulent environment using political, managerial, and individual leadership elements. It is an in‐depth case study of Lee Ji‐Song, who effectively managed the politically and managerially challenging environment that resulted from the merger of two large public corporations into the Korea Land and Housing Corporation. Lee, an engineer, manager, and chief executive of a major construction company, took advantage of his political, managerial, and individual leadership capital to cope with political challenges from lawmakers and with managerial challenges such as postmerger integration management, organizational stabilization, and financial improvement. The authors suggest that an effective public corporation leader must be a skillful politician and businessperson, as public corporations often operate in an environment in which public and private values interact.     

Public Management on the Ground: Clustering Managers Based on Their Behavior

Public management research has identified a dizzying array of management variables that affect organizational performance. While scholars have learned much by analyzing one or a few specific behavioral dimensions of public management at a time, we argue for the value of a more holistic and inductive approach that uses data on several aspects of public management for identifying manager types. Such an approach accounts for both the cognitive processes of people affected by management and the reality that managers’ individual behavioral decisions are interrelated. We examine the overlap of 21 aspects of public school management behavior using cluster analysis. We identify four different manager types (“firefighters,” “laissez-faire managers,” “administrators,” and “proactive floor managers”), each reflecting a distinct constellation of managerial behaviors. The manager types we call “administrators” and “proactive floor managers” are associated with relatively better outcomes, while “firefighters” are associated with relatively worse outcomes.     

Public Service Motivation,Task, and Non-task Behavior: A Performance Appraisal Experiment with Korean MPA and MBA Students

ABSTRACT

Appraisals of public employees are important for a host of reasons, and particularly so with the increasing emphasis on pay-for-performance systems and performance-based management in the public sector. However, managerial appraisals of employees can be somewhat subjective and our understanding of the appraisal process in the public sector is largely U.S.-centric. In this study, we explore whether characteristics of managers, like a rater's public service motivation (PSM), affect appraisal outcomes for their subordinates. Using a mixed experimental design, we analyze these dynamics in a non-U.S. context with MBA and MPA students enrolled in one of Korea's top universities. We find that rater PSM moderates the influence of both task and non-task behavior on an employee's performance appraisal.