A working model to help institutionalize quality improvements in local governments

This article describes a working model designed to help leadership in public management introduce quality improvements and eventually facilitate transformations to quality organizations (TQO). By quality improvements and transformations to quality organizations -- whether in government, public education, public health, or other fields of activity -- we mean those institutional changes which reliably achieve ever greater effectiveness in accomplishing mission and responsively achieve ever higher levels of measurable service to public “customers.”

This article discusses the development of an organizational assessment instrument which the authors designed for the County of Los Angeles. Building on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the President's Award in the USA, as well as on the review of other state and local criteria and comments received through a national review process, the authors formulated criteria of quality management with a view toward public service customers, particularly at local levels of government.

The model described has been initially applied to conduct self-assessments in four departments of Los Angeles County. It is also intended for broader use by administrative practitioners and scholars interested in the organizational change process. This article reports the development of the working model and identifies some lessons learned. The purpose of this article is threefold: (1) to inform about quality developments in the County of Los Angeles, (2) to present the working model as a point of departure for dialogue about the role which quality criteria might play in strengthening local governments more broadly, and (3) to consider the working model's possible use in facilitating shared mutual learning across geographic and other boundaries electronically.     

Citizenship as Targeted Behavior: Responses to Organizational Justice and the Role of Culture

The study aimed at reviewing citizenship as targeted behavior in response to justice perceptions and investigating the role of within-culture differences on citizenship responses to organizational fairness perceptions. Data were solicited from 150 employees and their supervisors representing various public sector entities of Pakistan. Results showed that distributive and interactional fairness predict interpersonal organizational citizenship behavior. Organizational fairness did not predict citizenship behavior targeted at organizations. Organizational justice had negative values of citizenship behavior for higher values of collectivism. Findings and implications for human resource management practitioners and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

State writing,subversion and citizenship in Southern Rhodesia’s state of emergency, 1959–1960

This article takes a moment of political upheaval – Southern Rhodesia’s 1959 State of Emergency – to explore the uses of writing in the remaking of state authority and citizenship. The 1950s had produced a powerful bureaucratic state, a shaky attempt at multi-racial “partnership,” and African aspirations to a citizenship able to encompass equality, rights and self-determination. The Emergency brought the tensions in these modes of government and citizenship to the fore. The article explores the working out of these tensions in two instances: the bureaucratic attempt to manage political detainees, and the police evidence used to substantiate charges of subversion on the part of nationalists in court. The article traces the limits of the state’s “lawfare” and the means by which detainees and nationalists developed new understandings of citizenship as aspirational imaginary, legal condition and practical tool, through the written word.     

Why Some Cities Provide More Public Goods than Others: A Subnational Comparison of the Provision of Public Goods in German Cities in 1912

What determines a government’s level of public goods provision? Most scholarship tends to focus on the “demand side” of public goods provision, highlighting how varying patterns of social preferences shape the provision of public goods. In an analysis of municipal hospitals and infant health clinics in Germany’s 84 largest cities in 1912, this article uses an original dataset to test a variety of hypotheses to introduce an alternative logic centered around the institutional capability of local governments. The findings suggest a supply-side theory of public goods provision in which the fiscal resources of cities and the professionalism of local government officials are important determinants of the level of public goods. The implications of these findings are two-fold: first, in federal political systems, highly capable local governments—with resources, expertise and professionalism—might represent a “decentralized” or “bottom-up” path for achieving higher overall levels of state infrastructural power in a political system. Second, public health threats might serve as a crucial trigger for the development of local capacity and hence state infrastructural power more broadly.     

CACOPHONIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY CHORUS ABOUT CHANGE AT PUBLIC WORKSITES,AS CONTRASTED WITH SOME STRAIGHT-TALK FROM A PLANNED CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

The New Public Management (henceforth NPM) has coalesced into a movement in a short period of time, virtually worldwide. Thus, inter alia, we hear about the allegedly-new focus on the “customers” of public services, which are to be provided by “public intrapreneurs” as well as by cadres of employees at all levels who are “empowered.” And so on and on—through the conventional organizational litany including cross-training, total quality, performance measurement, and eventuating in strategic planning. These emphases make for a pleasing, even convincing, organizational libretto.

If the “chorus” proclaiming the NPM libretto is both ubiquitous as well as insistent, however, the chanting is often loosely-coupled, curiously directed, and at times even contradictory—at times so much so as to alert one's native cunning about what forces are really at work. Hence, the reference here to the “chorus” and also the “cacophonies” this essay detects in NPM's ardent vocalizing. This reflects our judgment that, in equal measure, NPM combines ubiquity, too much of some useful things, unreconciled diversities, and issues at sixes-and-sevens.

But this essay also urges that NPM can “walk its talk.” In effect, several emphases will at once help explain how NPM was all-but-predestined to experience serious shortfalls, as well as prescribe how NPM can rise about these limitations. Particular attention gets directed at appropriate guidelines interaction and structural arrangements.

Four emphases relate to these critical-cum-constructive ambitions. In preview, NPM 1. seldom even attempted detailing a useful approach to applications;

2. typically neglected systemic or millieu characteristics within which applications occurred;

3. usually did not specify a useful front-load in designs: i.e., training in values, attitudes, and interaction skills that would facilitate developing a “cultural preparedness” for appropriate applications; and

4. seldom specified supportive structural/managerial arrangements.

This essay proposes to do better.

This essay takes a direct if dual approach to describing the New Public Management “chorus” and its “cacophonies.” To begin, introductory attention goes to NPM as a “liberation” of theory and practice beyond the classic conservatisms of Public Administration. Then, four limitations of this NPM “chorus” will be detailed, and this quartet of “cacophonies” also implies ways to enhance NPM applications, as well as urges a stark warning against overselling.     

The primacy of self-development in Chris Argyis writings

This paper critically explores Chris Argyris’ concern for human development as found in his organizational writings. Specifically, his focus on a personl development approach to human growth in organization is critically assessed as to its prospects to facilitate behavior needed for “public” organization. Argyris’ theoretical emphasis upon “self-development” as explicated is unlikely to provide for social consciousness and political action by everyday participants of organization. His mode of “self-development” is a perspective which is fundamentally grounded in the psychological and moral subjectively of the individual. As such, Argyris’ developmental mode is one which primarily promotes consciousness and action of self-interest rather than social involvement. A more authentically public type of organization requires a developmental mode which engenders democratic action toward the shared problems and common needs experienced in everyday organizational reality.     

Supervisor Relationships,Teamwork, Role Ambiguity and Discretionary Power: Nurses in Australia and the United Kingdom

This paper reports comparative research comparing the relationship between supervisor-subordinate relationships, teamwork, role ambiguity and discretionary power for nurses working in public and private sector hospitals in Australia and the UK. The findings indicate that the four factors accounted for approximately a quarter of the variance for nurses in the UK and almost a fifth of the variance for nurses working in public sector hospitals. Moreover, the findings identify a significant difference across all variables for nurses working in public sector hospitals compared with private sector with nurses in the private sector having higher satisfaction levels and perceiving lower levels of role ambiguity. There were fewer differences for nurses working in Australian hospitals compared with UK hospitals with nurses in Australia perceiving a better supervisor-subordinate relationship and nurses in the UK perceiving greater satisfaction with teamwork.     

Contested Statelessness in Sabah,Malaysia: Irregularity and the Politics of Recognition

ABSTRACT

UNHCR's current #IBelong campaign presents stateless people as uniquely excluded, emphasizing the need for legal solutions to their situation. Such approaches to statelessness sidestep both the complexities of lived experience and the wider politics of state recognition. In response, this article utilizes ethnographic data from Sabah, Malaysia, and theorizations of the gray areas between citizenship and statelessness to argue for the fundamental connection between statelessness and irregularity. Such a connection is central to understanding both the everyday lives of potentially stateless people and Sabah's public discourse on statelessness as a mirage obscuring the problems of “illegals” and “street children.”     

The Voice of Professionals—Lost in Evaluation?

Based on the merger of two Swedish university hospitals, this article examines the relationship between professionals and policymakers in public sector reform. Data from a survey to 663 physicians show that only 2 percent of physicians experienced a working dialogue in this relationship. The relationship with the hospital management was considered equally poor. The article seeks to understand why the voice of professionals was ignored. Results indicate that managers and policymakers collaborated—rather than competed—to avoid blame, by consequently ignoring the professionals’ feedback and attempts at whistle-blowing. This blame-avoidance strategy differs from that traditionally described in the agency literature. More studies in this area are encouraged.     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Public Service Motivation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector

This article examines the mediating role of public service motivation (PSM) on the relationship between employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). A sample of employees working in public sector banks in Egypt completed a structured questionnaire comprising of questions regarding CSR perceptions and PSM. Immediate supervisors rated the OCB of employees who responded to the survey. Results reported in the paper found the following: a) Employee perceptions of both internal and external CSR had a positive influence on the development of employee desire to serve the public; b) PSM partially mediated the relationship between internal CSR perceptions and employee OCB; c) PSM fully mediated the relationship between external CSR perceptions and OCB. This study extends current knowledge of the theoretical foundations surrounding CSR at the individual-level of analysis and offers practical implications by stressing the importance of employee desire to serve the public.     

Building the Capacity of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: Challenges of Theory and Practice

Abstract

As voluntary and community organizations in the UK (VCOs) expand their role in the provision of public services, they are under increasing pressure from governmental funders to improve their management and organizational systems - to “build their capacity.” This paper considers the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the idea of “capacity building.” It also looks at the challenges for VCOs of meeting the capacity building agenda while simultaneously retaining organizational distinctiveness and independence. Action research is proposed as a means to meet the challenges.     

Comparative administration: theory and experience

In order to determine the extent to which regional training in management would serve their own diverse national needs, nine African countries with different colonial, economic. political, and economic traditions sponsored a large-scale restarch project .to identify. common behavioral characteristics in the vublic, private. and amstatal sectors. The theory was that if there was a sufficient body of ;cbuind.thtoighout the region, it would be possible to adopt standard training and selection procedures and use similar approaches in improving organizational designs. The theory posited further that comparative studies conducted in sufficient depth could separate the unique from the common elements of managerial behavior and contribute to the desirn of national as well as reeional training systems. Studies conducted with these ends in mind were also expected distinguish between behavioral differences that were associated with the political and cultural context or organizational setting, and those reflecting individual characteristics. The study proceded by gathering reports of “management events” that reflected both “effective” and “ineffective” behavior on the part of administrators in the public, private, and “semi-public” sectors, including government agencies, large industrial corporations, and parastatals or public enterprises. When nearly 2,000 such events wen coded, it became possible to identify Ntecn clearly distinguishable skills that ranked at the top in frequency of use in all threz sectors. In the African context, it was hund certain skills such as the motivation of employees, the interpretation and avvlication of conventional rules and remhtions involving honnel-administration; -and interpasonal skills were more inportant than technical knowledge or the general administrative techniques commonlv taught in academic curricula. The intensity with which these skills an used, however, was found to be different across countries. Motivational issues an involved much mare frequently in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zambia, for example, than in Tanzania ar Angola Writing skills headed the list in Tanzania but no other country. In the private sector, tcchnical skills were more in demand than motivational skills. Knowledge of procedures was far more important in the public than the parastatal or private sectors. When the results were coded by level of management, however, the dominance of motivational issues was universal. On the other hand, senior managers wae more concerned with negotiations and financial management than were their junior colleagues. Among the general skills least frequently encounted were impact analysis and evaluation, program analysis, computational skills, economic analysis, and Community relations. Among all skills coded in the sample, the worst perfonname was in the field of bureaucratic politics, in which 97% of the incidents were presented as examples of “ineffective performance.” These mults con- the possibility of identifying a common core of skills required by private and public managers, but they also suggest the need for careful adaptation of curricula to emphasize known organizational and national contexts, and they suggest as well a wcedure that can be followed m designing such adaptations. They do not confirm the expectation that private managers are better motivated than public administrators in the African context or that their personal qualities are vay different The major differences appear to be in the technical requirements of their positions, including accounting and writine skills. An isnuortarit caution needs to be observed in the application of the techniiue used in this study: the data do not disclose what skills might have improved performance if they had been present, and they do not predict future needs.     

Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: A Comparative Case Study of Insurance Physicians and Secondary School Teachers

Currently, there is an intense debate on the pressures facing public professionals in service delivery. Several studies show increasing discontent among professionals toward policies they have to implement. In this article, we aim to contribute to this topic by analyzing this discontent of public professionals in terms of “policy alienation.” The policy alienation concept is used to frame the experiences of professionals in a coherent theoretical framework. We have used a qualitative comparative case study of Dutch insurance physicians and secondary school teachers to study the factors that influence the degree of policy alienation across different domains. Our article shows that facets of New Public Management are important in explaining the pressures on public professionals implementing public policies. However, others factors are also prominent, and the degree of the implementers' professionalism seems especially important. These insights help in understanding why public professionals embrace or resist the implementation of public policies.     

Creating Better Employees through Positive Leadership Behavior in the Public Sector

This paper advances the notion that leaders’ behavior in public organizations impacts employee emotions and workplace functioning. The paper proposes a conceptual model showing the impact that specific leader behaviors have on employee momentary emotions and thereby subjective well-being, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance. Findings from research on leader behaviors and follower outcomes in private organizations and workplace emotions are used to show the importance of understanding and promoting types of leader behaviors that enhance employee and organizational outcomes within public institutions. It is expected that this model will facilitate future research in this area.     

Open focus : implenenting projects in multi-organizational settings

Most managers charged with implementing projects in a complex, public/private partnership setting can cite cases of drastically changed, delayed, or thwarted community projects that at the outset seemed likely to proceed without a hitch. Although the specific context and project affect outcomes, the management approach toproject implementation also influences the degree of implementation difficulty and success. Implementation problems are likely to be compounded if the management approach is based upon a “traditional” hierarchical, stable organizational model. If, however, the arena is seen as the open, dynamic, amorphous, complex, “metaorganization” that it is, and management strategies appropriate to this arena are adopted, success is more likely. From the findings of a case study of project implementation in such a setting and interviews with more than forty community leaders emerged a conceptual model for this situation. This model, called the “Open Focus” model, is characterized by openness to the metaorganization, linking cormnunication, evocative leadership, and collaborative vision.     

Education and training in public administration: transference of segmenting organizational behavior

Organizations can survive, let alone progress, only if they carry out meaningful transactions with society at large. This process requires they differentiate their “organizational being” to respond to clientele needs and/or user demands. The inherent problem is that these differentiated structures may become segmented into tightly closed systems, being in effect organizations within organization characterized by self-serving vested interests. Expediency becomes the operating rule. Segmentation is common to all societies, but it is especially prevalent in situations of decline.

Advanced in this discussion is that the segmentation process may be accelerated and consolidated by in-house training and education, and especially by those of a public management character. A plea is made for universities to become more actively engaged in (a) the preparation and placement of “quality” educated persons and (b) the search/development of new public organization.     

Self-Care in Public and Community Sector Workplaces

Key aspects of modern public service and community workplaces associated with significant levels of distress are identified. This includes the transformation of public sector and community agencies under the aegis of new public management (NPM). Using a child protection case study, it is argued that NPM ethos generates stressful workplaces and “uncomfortable knowledge” adding pressure to a system already in crisis. It is also argued that while there is value in self-care practices like debriefing, “boundary maintenance,” and “work-life balance,” one critical aspect of self-care associated with the virtue ethics tradition is missing. This gap in the literature and practice needs attention.     

Change dynamics and public management: Challenges and opportunities

With the growth of contemporary technology, communications, and transportation, infused with television, computers, and the information highway, all of us are quickly becoming aware of the linked consequences of change. As traditional boundaries are collapsing around us, there is a growing sensitivity to the need for change, along with the belief that we need to plan for it. As such, strategic planning, competitive positioning, and innovative management systems that involve longer-term perspectives, critical trade-offs, and opportunity-driven forecasting are being fashioned here in the United States, and around the world. To grasp the initiative to shape an organizational context that will ensure a competitive, vibrant, healthy, fiscally rigorous and humane decision making environment for the public sector is the analytical foundation on which this symposium is anchored. Public managers have no option but to respond to American and global events, and the accompanying cultural, economic and political developments with courage, innovations, and strategic perspectives. It is clear that a paradigmatic crisis is occurring in American society and in public administration. Therefore, the harbingers of new paradigms are being created and crafted, which provide “hard” methods of inquiry, “real” cases of success; sound “fiscal” measures of performance; and “clearer” professional/leadership redefinitions of responsibility.