Performance Implications of Public Managers’ Goal Prioritization: An Empirical Test of the Link between Internal Management and Organizational Performance

Most studies on the goals-performance nexus focus on the implications of goal design. In public organizations with multiple goals, managerial goal prioritization can, however, in itself play a decisive role for performance. This study examines the effects of managerial goal prioritization and employee commitment on organizational performance. Analyses of parallel surveys of principals and teachers in higher secondary education and archival data on school performance show that principals’ goal prioritization is positively related to high school performance. The findings thus indicate that public managers should concentrate not only on how they design goals, but also on how they prioritize them.     

LEARNING FROM PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION,ASPIRATION LEVELS,AND MANAGERIAL PRIORITIES

While performance management is increasingly widespread, we still know little about how performance information generates learning and affects organizational responses. Recent work on performance information and learning in private business organizations, however, suggests that perceived negative performance triggers important strategic responses related to problem identification, search, and change. In turn, how performance is perceived depends on whether performance falls short of aspiration levels that are based on an organization's historical performance and the performance of peer organizations. This article adapts this model to a public sector context and tests one implication of the model, namely that public managers will increase their prioritization of goals that are currently performing below aspirations. This question is central to the study of public organizations pursuing multiple and democratically contested goals. Empirical findings based on administrative performance data and a survey of Danish school principals support this prediction.     

POLITICAL PRESSURES,ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY,AND ATTENTION TO TASKS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PRE‐CRISIS FINANCIAL REGULATION

Regulatory agencies, like most public organizations, typically operate with multiple tasks and goals, which requires them to prioritize some tasks over others. Such prioritization, while essential, engenders a risk of bureaucratic oversight of significant material problems. Despite the ubiquity and importance of these concerns, our understanding of agencies' allocation of attention across tasks is limited. This article develops a model of agencies' allocation of attention across tasks, which involves an interaction between external public and political pressures and agencies' distinct organizational identities. A brief comparison between two cases of pre‐crisis financial regulation illustrates the proposed model. The two cases suggest that the British Financial Services Authority's and the Israeli Supervisor of Banks' distinct identities conditioned their responses to similarly vigorous pressures to devote more attention to firms' alleged mistreatment of their customers, with important implications for these regulators' attention to firms' capitalization and liquidity.     

Distributed leadership and performance-related employee outcomes in public sector organizations

Distributed leadership is the sharing of leadership tasks between managers and employees. This article demonstrates how a distributed leadership perspective adds to the public administration literature by including an important sensitivity to planned and nonplanned leadership. We propose a theoretical model that explains the impact of distributed leadership on employee outcomes which have a direct or indirect impact on organizational performance in public organizations contingent on alignment with individual leadership capacity and organizational goals. Our empirical analysis in the Danish hospital sector shows initial support for the expected relationships between distributed leadership and performance-related employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and innovative behavior. This indicates that the distributed leadership perspective holds the potential to strengthen service delivery in complex public service organizations while there is weaker support for the notion that the positive impact of distributed leadership depends on individual leadership capacity and their support for organizational goals.     

Managing Goal Commitment in Public Organizations: The Effects of Goal Conflict

Public personnel policies increasingly adapt performance management systems that focus on goal attainment, and this makes goal commitment a critical issue in contemporary public administration research. Few studies have however empirically investigated the relationship between goal conflicts and goal commitment. This study examines the interplay between public managers’ goal prioritization, goal conflict and employees’ goal commitment. Multilevel data from 73 principals and 1464 teachers in secondary education show that goal conflict has a negative effect on the relationship between goal prioritization and goal commitment. The study thus adds to our knowledge about the conditions for influencing public employees’ goal commitment.     

MANAGERIAL GOALS IN A PERFORMANCE‐DRIVEN SYSTEM: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL TESTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Factors influencing managerial goals and decision‐making processes have been debated for decades among public administration scholars. Previous literature has explained goal setting through theories of performance gaps, bureaucratic control, and isomorphic rationality. However, there exists no direct empirical test of these theories to determine which theoretical expectation may have more or less weight with managers when setting organizational goals. Using an original survey of university presidents, this study tests how public managers prioritize competing performance goals. Findings suggest that the goal setting decisions of these public managers is primarily driven by political control mechanisms.     

Citizens' Learning,Involvement, and Participation in Decision-Making Under the Democratic Ethos: A Theoretical Framework and the Israeli Experience

Public administration literature usually assumes that citizens' participation in administrative decision-making (PDM) processes can improve public sector performance and trust. In this article, we question the universality of this assumption, arguing that PDM processes will have positive results in terms of performance and trust only when there are available channels to influence policy outcomes and democratic participatory behavior. We construct theoretical arguments based on a mechanism of social learning and illustrate them by reference to the case of Israel. The framework highlights the centrality and importance of culture and social characters for the study and planning of public administration reforms.     

A STRATEGY FOR FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CODES OF ETHICS IN PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

Codes of ethics in public service organizations are designed to serve three purposes: provide enduring solutions to existing ethical problems, educate the public about the mission of the organization, and foster an ethical climate in the organization. There is no agreement in the literature as to how useful and effective codes are. This paper argues that codes of ethics can be effective with respect to these three goals, only if careful attention is given to the process of internalization of the code's provisions. Internalization is most likely to occur under two interrelated conditions: when members of an organization clarify, articulate, and establish integrated values systems; and when the ethical code is formulated and adopted as a consequence of a participatory democratic process. When members of the organization are able to relate the code's provisions to their personal integrated values systems, a greater compliance and commitment will prevail.     

Public‐Nonprofit Partnerships for Collective Action in Dynamic Contexts of Emergencies

This article seeks to understand the problem of building cooperation among public and nonprofit organizations to achieve public service goals in emergencies. It also examines the factors that contribute to successful public‐nonprofit partnerships (PNP) and what factors inhibit their development. The theoretical framework draws upon the literature on social capital, network theory and organizational collaboration. The article uses the network analysis perspective to assess the relationships among organizations in terms of their strength, direction and density in the rapid evolution of emergency response operations. The theoretical framework is applied to analyse the interorganizational responses to the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) terrorist attacks in New York City. Emergency response operations required coordinated action among many actors across multiple jurisdictions under conditions of urgent stress, high demand and tight time constraints. This type of network analysis can constitute a field of substantial interest and importance to democratic societies that are seeking to manage problems of public service delivery in emergencies using innovative means.     

Accountability Practices in Public Child Welfare Services

The literature on child welfare caseworkers’ accountability practices is fairly scant. This article observes and unravels accountability in child welfare practices using interview data. Findings show that child welfare caseworkers (frontline workers) face multiple and conflicting goals and mandates imposed upon them by their organizations, systemic rules, procedures, their clients, and their own professional norms. There were conflicts among accountability sources and caseworkers manage accountability with multiple strategies. Most of the interviewees showed that they acknowledged the significance of accountability management. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

“Let's organize”: The organizational basis for stable public governance

This study carries two distinct contributions to extant literature. Theoretically, it introduces an organizational approach to the study of public governance. Empirically, it demonstrates how the organizational architecture of government represents a stable and systemic capacity for public governance across time. The study establishes how stability serves as an enduring feature of public governance and how this is anchored in the organizational architecture of government systems. Moreover, structured flexibility is illustrated by how the civil service adapts to both international organizations and societal stakeholders. Theorizing the organizational dimension of public governance, this study also introduces a design tool that may be useful for deliberately (re)structuring public governance. Empirically, these arguments are probed by a sizable dataset with 13,173 observations across 40 years, consisting of nine surveys of civil servants at ministry and agency levels. The data enables a long-term perspective on government civil servants over nearly half a century, thus allowing for a comprehensive study of the organizational basis for public governance.     

PERFORMANCE IN THE THIRD SECTOR: A MICRO-LEVEL FRAMEWORK AND SOME LESSONS FROM ISRAEL

Organizational performance is perhaps the most studied topic in management literature. For many years much attention has been given to understanding performance of the first (private/business) and second (public/administrative) sectors. Only recently have studies shown interest in the performance of the rapidly evolving third sector. However, most studies on the performance of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations (VNPOs) have so far adopted a distinctly macro-oriented perspective, overlooking micro-level viewpoints which may have special merit for a broader understanding of effectiveness and efficiency in these bodies. This paper provides an insight into this less studied dimension of performance analysis and tries to illuminate its advantages for VNPOs. The model applies existing knowledge from other fields such as organizational behavior and labor studies, and puts forward a theory that may prove useful for third-sector organizations struggling to improve results in a turbulent public arena. Furthermore, we provide some preliminary findings as collected in Na'amat (an Israeli VNPO of working women) that support the usefulness of this model.     

Ethical implications of the new managerialism: conflicting loyalties: normative pluralism in modern public administration one australian perspective

As public resources are not unlimited, choices have to be made between various community goals and the extent of their fulfilment. There is no necessary conflict between managing and attempting to allocate public resources amongst competing and sometimes conflicting goals in a more efficient, effective, economic and accountable manner on the one hand and contributing to society's overall wider goals on the other. Attention is drawn, however, to the need to deal in a balanced way with the requirements of equity, probity, fairness, impartiality, ethical considerations, public accountability, the public interest, and the exercise of public trust as well as, for example, deficiencies in data. A sound ethical basis is essential for workable and good administration.     

Multiple principals,multiple problems: Implications for effective governance and a research agenda for joint service delivery

The multiple principal problem refers to multiple collective action problems that organizations face when they must balance (competing) interests of multiple stakeholders under joint service delivery. It negatively affects different types of organization, yet we know little about how organizations (can) mitigate it. We expand a framework based on principal–agent theory, review the literature, and consider implications for effective governance of joint service delivery in the public sector. We observe that joint service delivery can lead to free‐riding and duplication in monitoring, lobbying by principals, and increased autonomy for agents, leading to inefficiency. We build a research agenda and tentatively suggest, based on the literature, that an interface approach, where an elected unitary actor is placed in a middle tier between politics and service delivery, might best mitigate the multiple principal problem, which is currently not dealt with effectively in public management.     

VERTICAL STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We report the results of a study examining the effects of vertical strategic alignment (that is, the degree to which strategic stances are consistent across different organizational levels) on public service performance. Longitudinal multivariate analysis is undertaken on a panel of public organizations over four years. We find that alignment on a prospecting strategy leads to better performance, but that no such effect is observed for a defending strategy. We also find that high levels of prospecting alignment produce stronger positive performance effects in centralized organizations and when environmental uncertainty is high. The implications of these findings for research and practice are considered in the conclusion.     

The architecture of organizations as missed opportunity in political research

Few scholars in political science or public administration deny that organization matters. However, the rare application of an organizational perspective in research suggests otherwise. To revive the awareness of organizations as unit or level of analysis, attributed and generic properties are distinguished. Attributed properties, which dominate research, assign functions and patterns of behaviour to an organization. In contrast, generic properties refer to the constitutive elements of organizations that take effect before attributed properties. This article takes a closer look at four generic properties by examining their often-implicit use in current political science and public administration research. The aim is to demonstrate that the formal dimension, the goals, the expertise of personnel and organizational boundaries exert an independent influence on the output of political or public sector organizations.     

OF POLITICS AND PURPOSE: POLITICAL SALIENCE AND GOAL AMBIGUITY OF US FEDERAL AGENCIES

As scholars have observed, government agencies have ambiguous goals. Very few large sample empirical studies, however, have tested such assertions and analysed variations among organizations in the characteristics of their goals. Researchers have developed concepts of organizational goal ambiguity, including 'evaluative goal ambiguity', and 'priority goal ambiguity', and found that these goal ambiguity variables related meaningfully to financial publicness (the degree of government funding versus prices or user charges), regulatory responsibility, and other variables. This study analyses the influence of the external political environment (external political authorities and processes) on goal ambiguity in government agencies; many researchers have analysed external influences on government bureaucracies, but very few have examined the effects on the characteristics of the organizations, such as their goals. This analysis of 115 US federal agencies indicates that higher 'political salience' to Congress, the president, and the media, relates to higher levels of goal ambiguity. A newly developed analytical framework for the analysis includes components for external environmental influences, organizational characteristics, and managerial influences, with new variables that represent components of the framework. Higher levels of political salience relate to higher levels of both types of goal ambiguity; components of the framework, however, relate differently to evaluative goal ambiguity than to priority goal ambiguity. The results contribute evidence of the viability of the goal ambiguity variables and the political environment variables. The results also show the value of bringing together concepts from organization theory and political science to study the effects of political environments on characteristics of government agencies.     

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CITIZEN SATISFACTION WITH THE GOVERNMENT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE MUNICIPALITIES

Despite the fact that performance management has been ubiquitously adopted in the public sector across the world today, there is limited and inconclusive evidence that it improves citizen satisfaction with the government. In this article, we use survey data and multilevel modelling to analyse the effects of multiple performance management components on citizens' perceptions of government performance across 19 major cities in China. The results reveal that performance management does have a positive impact on citizen satisfaction. In addition, citizen participation, performance feedback and accountability, and information openness are positively associated with citizen satisfaction along various performance dimensions in different magnitudes. While we should take account of and mitigate its unintended consequences, our results suggest that it is still promising for public organizations to implement performance management.     

An Evaluation Framework for Budget Reforms: A Guide for Assessing Public Budget Systems and Selecting Budget Process Reforms

While new tax proposals are evaluated with reference to formal evaluation criteria, no such standards exist for evaluating budget proposals. We propose an analytic framework to assess budgets across a series of dimensions, including whether it instills aggregate fiscal discipline, facilitates strategic prioritization of expenditures, and encourages effective and efficient use of budgeted resources, offering fiscal stability. The process also may be transparent, timely, and support public awareness and participation. We use this framework to evaluate the US budget, considering both areas of systematic inefficiency, while reviewing the history of budget reforms. We examine recent, frequently offered proposals that target specific budget process goals, considering how each affects all the budgeting goals, including interactions. We consider how a potential reform, aimed at addressing the failure to accomplish one normative goal, may impacts other goals, sometimes to the point of undermining overall progress.     

INTRODUCTION: DETERMINANTS OF PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

The performance of public organizations is one of the key topics in public administration research and practice. This topic was examined at the 'The Determinants of Performance in Public Organizations II' conference held at the University of Hong Kong in December 2006. The conference was held in association with the Public Management Research Association . In the present symposium we introduce four of the articles presented at conference. The articles explore: network performance (Kenis and Provan), goal ambiguity (Lee et al .), environmental shocks (Meier and O'Toole), and diversity (Pitts and Jarry). Alongside this we spotlight the importance of this field and introduce three research themes—contingency theory, measurement and data, and analysis.