The Right Mix? Gender Diversity in Top Management Teams and Financial Performance

Recent research has illustrated that demographic diversity influences the outcomes of public sector organizations. Most studies have focused on workforce diversity; by comparison, little is known about how managerial diversity affects organizational outcomes. This article focuses on gender diversity in the top management teams of public organizations and its relationship to financial performance. Theory suggests that management diversity can be a positive asset for organizations, allowing for the use of more diverse knowledge and human skill sets. Results of this study, however, suggest that organizations may only be able to leverage these advantages if they have a supporting management structure. In a longitudinal study of top management teams in Danish municipalities, the authors find that gender diversity in top management teams is associated with higher financial performance, but only in municipalities with a management structure that supports cross‐functional team work. These results are interpreted in light of existing theory, and implications are suggested.     

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.     

New Executives from Inside or Outside? The Effect of Executive Replacement on Organizational Change

This article investigates how executive succession influences the comprehensiveness of structural changes pursued by public organizations. Executive successions are important events for organizations that provide salient opportunities for introducing organizational change, yet little research has analyzed this relationship. The author argues that the less familiarity a new executive has with the organization and the field in which it works, the more likely it is that comprehensive organizational change will take place. Empirical results from quantitative analyses of executive succession events in Danish municipalities from 1984 to 2000 confirm this. Interestingly, the degree to which new practices are legitimized moderates the findings. Inside successors are more likely to conduct comprehensive structural changes after new practices receive normative and regulatory legitimacy. The article contributes to the literature on executive succession by highlighting how it is an antecedent to different types of organizational change. Contributions to practitioner and public management research are discussed.     

The Impact of Performance Management on Performance in Public Organizations: A Meta‐Analysis

Performance‐based management is pervasive in public organizations; countless governments have implemented performance management systems with the hope that they will improve organizational effectiveness. However, there has been little comprehensive review of their impact. This article conducts a meta‐analysis on the impact of performance management on performance in public organizations. It contributes to the current literature in three ways. First, it examines the effect of the “average” performance management system. Second, it examines the influence of management: whether beneficial performance management practices moderate the average effect. Third, it examines the effect of “time” on performance management. Using 2,188 effects from 49 studies, the analysis finds that performance management has a small average effect. However, the effect is substantially larger when indicators of best practices in high‐quality studies are included, indicating that management practices have an important impact on the effectiveness of performance management systems. Evidence for the effect of time is mixed.     

Does Perceived Societal Impact Moderate the Effect of Transformational Leadership on Value Congruence? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Transformational leadership, it is argued, aligns employees' values with those of their organization. Empirical research has found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence. Yet studies rely predominantly on cross‐sectional research designs that limit causal conclusions and have not uncovered the potential contextual conditions of this argument. This article argues that transformational leadership positively affects value congruence in public service organizations, but only when employees see that their jobs impact the well‐being of other people and society. To test the relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence and the moderating effect of perceived societal impact, the article combines a field experiment on 79 managers of public service organizations and a balanced survey panel of their 583 employees. Consistent with the expectation, results indicate heterogeneous treatment effects, implying that employees' perceived societal impact is important to consider when transformational leaders strive to align the values of individual employees and the organization.     

Managing Racial Diversity: Matching Internal Strategies with Environmental Needs

Although demographic diversity has been of paramount concern to researchers and practitioners in public management, studies exploring managerial strategies to capitalize on and respond to the needs of diverse client populations are scarce. This article examines strategies for managing diversity as a way to buffer environmental challenges in service delivery and performance resulting from heterogeneous client demands. Findings suggest that administrators prioritize diversity efforts when faced with higher levels of regulatory violations (a performance measure). A higher percentage of black residents is associated with lower service quality. However, the effect of managerial strategies for diversity on performance is conditioned by the racial composition of the clients: as the percentage of black nursing home residents increases, diversity management efforts are associated with a lower number of regulatory violations. Similarly, at higher levels of racial heterogeneity, diversity management efforts are associated with fewer regulatory violations.     

Self‐interest in new wrapping: “Appeal to the public interest” as a topos in lobbying

This article explores public affairs and lobbying strategies that make public appeals beyond organizational self‐interest and instead focus on appeals to the public interest. While research has highlighted such appeals as a staple for lobbying campaigns, there is scant research exploring the communicative construction of this notion. Thus, this article uses the rhetorical concept of topos to explore how lobbyists attempt to fuse their private interests with a broader appeal to what is best for society. In particular, we discuss how different types of organizations have different rhetorical opportunities to ground their arguments. Finally, we discuss the democratic implications of appeals to the public interest as a standard lobbying strategy.     

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Challenges in Managing Philanthropic Support for Public Services

Collaborations between nonprofit and public sector organizations have become an increasingly important phenomenon in state and local public service delivery since the publication of the Winter Commission report in 1993 . This article focuses on one of the less studied types of public–nonprofit collaborations, those in which philanthropic support from nonprofit organizations supplements the resources and activities of public agencies. Drawing on the case of “nonprofit‐as‐supplement collaborations” that support park services in New York City, this article documents the benefits and drawbacks associated with such collaborations. While they can provide increased resources and encourage management innovations, they also can lead to inequities in the availability and quality of services, the preponderance of particularistic goals over the broader public interest, and the politicization of previously bureaucratic decision making. The authors offer two strategies for public managers to realize more effectively the benefits yet mitigate the shortcomings of these collaborations.     

Managing Diversity in U.S. Federal Agencies: Effects of Diversity and Diversity Management on Employee Perceptions of Organizational Performance

Diversity in the workplace is a central issue for contemporary organizational management. Concomitantly, managing increased diversity deserves greater concern in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. The authors address the effects of diversity and diversity management on employee perceptions of organizational performance in U.S. federal agencies by developing measures of three variables: diversity, diversity management, and perceived organizational performance. Drawing from the Central Personnel Data File and the 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey, their findings suggest that racial diversity relates negatively to organizational performance. When moderated by diversity management policies and practices and team processes, however, racial diversity correlates positively with organizational performance. Gender and age diversity and their interactions with contextual variables produce mixed results, suggesting that gender and age diversity reflect more complicated relationships. This article provides evidence for several benefits derived from effectively managing diversity.     

The Limits and Possibilities of Volunteering: A Framework for Explaining the Scope of Volunteer Involvement in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Despite popular rhetoric concerning the benefits of volunteerism for public and nonprofit organizations, the use and management of volunteers to assist in the delivery of services is uneven: some organizations rely heavily on volunteer labor for this purpose, while others circumscribe volunteer contributions or eschew volunteer involvement altogether. This article introduces eight dimensions of volunteer involvement—four involving organizational decisions and four regarding volunteers’ decisions—that make up the overall scope of volunteer involvement in an organization. Based on a review of the literature, the article presents a conceptual framework and several research propositions concerning how organizational characteristics, volunteer management, and environmental factors affect the overall scope of volunteer involvement in an organization.     

Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations

Equal treatment is a key feature of modern bureaucracy. However, several studies have shown that public organizations discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities to different degrees. Which organizational features explain differences in discrimination is largely unknown. This article proposes that organizational performance relates to an organization's likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination and argues that poor‐performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers in such organizations are more prone to stereotyping behavior. The study combines a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 71 Danish public schools with administrative data on the schools. Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally faced discrimination but that they experienced a higher callback rate from better‐performing schools than from poorer‐performing schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Public Sector Organizations and Reputation Management: Five Problems

ABSTRACT

This article discusses five problems that most public organizations will face when adopting a popular, yet largely unexplored management concept: reputation management. The inherently political nature of public organizations constrains their reputation management strategies. Furthermore, they have trouble connecting with their stakeholders on an emotional level, standing out as unique and differentiated organizations, communicating as coherent bodies, and maintaining excellent reputations. In this article, we examine in depth the nature of these problems and seek to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reputation management in a public sector context.     

Examining Empirical Evidence on Diversity Effects: How Useful Is Diversity Research for Public‐Sector Managers?

This article reviews the body of empirical research on work-related consequences of human diversity and presents an agenda for future investigations. Ideally, a synthesis of research findings to inform managing-for-diversity efforts should enable managers to interpret events in their own administrative contexts. Our assessment of the diversity literature suggests that managers are using largely untested assumptions as a basis for diversity policies, strategies, and actions. We call for greater contribution from public administration scholars to the body of research focusing on how human diversity can best be managed to produce positive results for individuals and their work organizations.     

Strategic Management and Performance in Public Organizations: Findings from the Miles and Snow Framework

This article integrates the research evidence that applies Miles and Snow's strategic management framework to the performance of public agencies. Miles and Snow developed several strategy types, arguing that prospectors (searching for new approaches) and defenders (sticking with the existing pattern of services) are aligned with processes, structures, and the environment in ways that lead them to outperform reactors (awaiting for instructions from the environment), which have no consistent strategy or alignment. Six key lessons for the practice of strategic management in public organizations are provided based on a critical review. Findings point toward the importance of employing a mix of strategies in public organizations, contrary to Miles and Snow—a strong evidence base for the association between prospecting and defending and performance and for relationships between strategy types and processes and structures. However, no empirical evidence is provided for alignment across strategy, structure, process, and the environment. The findings, largely derived from the United Kingdom and United States, suggest that the most successful strategy recipe depends on the ingredients, and thus managers must pay attention to the connections between the outlined contingencies to generate the best results using the adopted strategy.     

Marching to Different Drummers? The Performance Effects of Alignment between Political and Managerial Perceptions of Performance Management

The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is central to the administration of modern democratic societies, yet it often is neglected in studies of the performance of public organizations. In this article, the authors examine the performance effects of alignment between politicians’ and senior managers’ perceptions of one of the more pervasive public management reforms over recent decades: performance management. Evidence from a panel of English local governments supports the hypothesis that alignment of views between politicians and senior managers on performance management is associated with better organizational performance. Furthermore, this relationship is strengthened in organizations that display higher levels of role flexibility by managers and greater trust between politicians and managers.     

Lessons from Resource Dependence Theory for Contemporary Public and Nonprofit Management

The fiscal landscape continues to challenge public and nonprofit managers. Against this backdrop, public and nonprofit managers look for new strategies to address the challenges associated with limited resources. Resource dependence theory provides valuable guidance for managers who want to understand the considerations and consequences relevant to different types of interorganizational partnering. In this article, the theory's core ideas are described, along with three common strategies or tactics that organizations use to obtain critical resources from the environment: merging, forming alliances, and co‐opting. For each strategy, the authors derive a set of practical lessons for busy public and nonprofit managers.     

The Life and Death of Public Organizations: A Question of Institutional Design?

Why do some public organizations grow old and others die young? Since Herbert Kaufman first posed this question, considerable research has been devoted to answering it. The findings of that research suggest that the design of new public organizations affects, to a significant degree, their survival chances. In this article, we test whether and how “design factors” affected the durability of the so‐called New Deal organizations initiated under FDR's first term. Our findings confirm that design factors do matter, but their effects change over time. We draw out some potential implications for institutional design and sketch a renewed research agenda to determine why some public organizations survive environmental pressure whereas others succumb to it.     

For the Want of a Nail: The Interaction of Managerial Capacity and Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance

Human resource management and managerial capacity are well documented in the public management literature as integral management functions. The field has devoted attention to the importance of human resources, but it has yet to consider whether human resource management interacts with capacity in attaining organizational outcomes. Using a large‐N, multiyear data set of public organizations, this article seeks to rectify this gap in the literature. The findings validate scholarly arguments on the importance of public organizations’ need to manage human resources and capacity effectively, identifying just the right combination for performance gains. Empirical results encourage practitioners to consider the ways in which human resource management and capacity work together to influence performance but sometimes undermine each other in counterintuitive ways.     

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.     

Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary Organizations

Climate science research documents and predicts changes in the physical environment. This information informs policy decisions and public programs through the design of human interventions that promote adaptive management. Since the early 2000s, federal funding has led to the creation of transdisciplinary regional climate workgroups to facilitate integrative knowledge coproduction and promote shared use of research results by scientific and nonscientific stakeholders. Labeled “boundary organizations,” these workgroups are tasked with facilitating partnerships between climate science researchers and practitioners with expertise in multiple physical and social science disciplines. When these organizations are successful, scientific findings and practitioner experiences are integrated to synergistically create usable knowledge about adaptive management that provides direct public value and creates broader societal impacts. This article explores the broader impacts provided by these boundary organizations through the establishment of regional research agendas and the communication of research results in ways that influence regional public policy and promote adaptive management.