Adoption of comprehensive risk management in local government

In the aftermath of large company failures in the early 2000s, there emerged a new wave of efforts to enhance risk management (RM) and control in enterprises. The normative RM model has been promoted widely to all organisations, including public sector organisations. Using survey data, this article describes and explains the diffusion and adoption of RM innovation in local government in Finland. Our survey results support the argument that if comprehensive RM is not obligatory, it is not widely used in local government. Our analysis reveals that financial constraints explain to some extent the existence of comprehensive RM in municipalities, while structural factors such as the size of municipalities do not, even though RM is slightly more advanced in larger rather than smaller local governments. Slow adoption indicates that comprehensive RM as a managerial innovation lacks immediate benefit when assessed against the efforts and costs of its introduction and maintenance.     

Organizational Trust and Accountability Reforms in Public Management: Analysis of Inter-agency Implementation Relations in Kenya

Contemporary governments have persistently responded to accruing implementation blind-spots by further restructuration of public bureaucracies. This has come with increased agencification and coordination efforts to enhance organizational efficacy and to produce trust for legitimation purposes. Accountability reforms in particular rarely address non-formal implementation processes that seem to characterize these efforts, mainly, inter-organizational trust. This is despite mounting evidences on the centrality of organizational trust in collaborative implementation processes of policy reforms. Basing on qualitative data from Kenya, this paper explores the production of organizational trust and its influence on the implementation environments for accountability reforms between oversight and governmental institutions. Data indicate that common difficulties in collaborative-implementation framework like fragile horizontal accountability-relations, misinterpretations of authority, obsession with control and autonomy, poor organizational-communication mechanisms, public trust deficits, poor internalization and institutionalization, etc. also correspond to problems of organizational trust. So, it is suggested that besides building public and interpersonnel trust, a policy design should also device steps that can strengthen internal-accountability systems, reduce some forms of bureaucratic slackness, enhance interorganizational communication and justice systems. This should improve inter-agency trust and ease cultural-instrumental tensions typical in collaborative implementation relations common in modern public administration.     

Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior of Public Research Institutions

The purpose of this article is to analyze the organizational behavior of public research organizations based on their human resources development and management. The study here focuses on the largest Italian public research body. The pyramid of R&D people shows the irregular spatial structure of the research personnel per macro regions and the index of seniority indicates older research personnel in the North and Central Part of Italy than in the South Italy. The analysis of human resources displays organizational weaknesses and threats for public research labs generated by research policy based on shrinking public research lab budgets and downsizing of research personnel. Some critical human resource management implications are discussed in order to improve the strategic change and research performances of public research institutions in turbulent and fast-changing markets.     

A Preliminary Examination of Citizen Orientation and Multiple Dimensions of Organizational Performance

In this article, I discuss citizen orientated public management in relation to extant frameworks and theories in public management and organization research, including the role of the public servant, collaborative public management, citizen coproduction, and relational bureaucracy. Following the discussion, I hypothesize about the relationship between public organizations’ citizen orientations and multiple dimensions of organizational performance. I use data from approximately 900 New York City elementary and middle schools from 2008 to 2011 to examine the relationship. Preliminary findings indicate that a citizen orientation is positively related to multiple dimensions of public organization performance.     

STRATEGY,STRUCTURE AND PROCESS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: A TEST OF THE MILES AND SNOW MODEL

We present a comprehensive empirical application of the Miles and Snow (1978) model of organizational strategy, structure and process to the public sector. We refine the model by distinguishing between strategy formulation and implementation, and applying it to 90 public service organizations. Although the empirical evidence shows that organizational strategies fit the Miles and Snow categories of prospector, defender and reactor, the relationship between these strategies and organizational structures (for example, centralization) and processes (for example, planning) is less consistent with their model. Conclusions are drawn for public management theory and practice.     

Disclosure on Measures to Prevent Corruption Risks: A Study of Italian Local Governments

This article investigates the characteristics of the disclosures of anticorruption measures that Italian local governments (LGs) publish to increase transparency, public accountability, and citizens’ trust in public administration. The analysis of the anticorruption plans of a sample of Italian LGs shows that this type of disclosure might be a way of repairing organizational legitimacy after an occurrence of corruption. More external directors in the governing body also increase the pressure on LG managers to publish information about anticorruption measures. Finally, larger LGs demonstrate a greater propensity to provide information on the actions implemented to mitigate corruption risks.     

“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.     

Innovation in Public Management: Is Public E-Procurement a Wave of the Future? A Theoretical and Exploratory Analysis

Project management has become an answer to many traditional organizational structuration and performance shortcomings, while gaining currency in business and public sector organizations. Public procurement systems have evolved into public electronic procurement systems with variations and distinctions in the age of globalization and digitalized complexities. This article examines the development of public e-procurement as an innovation in public management in the contexts of project management, public procurement management, and e-governance. It also links practice to theory—through a fourfold theoretical perspective—with contributions to the knowledge in public procurement, governance, and public administration.     

Quality Management in Public-Sector Organizations: Evidence from Six EU Countries

Although there is considerable evidence for the hypothesis that an efficient use of management techniques is the key to a good public service delivery, a lot of studies come to the conclusion that there is only partial, reluctant implementation or even a general lack of the use of such techniques by public managers. This paper examines the determinants for the use of quality management techniques in public sector organizations from six EU countries. It turns out that especially more organizational autonomy and result control appear to be of importance while, surprisingly, the combination of these variables leads to negative results.     

Citizens Differ from Organizations: Modeling a Specific Citizen-Centered Collaborative Capacity

This article discusses the various challenges that public organizations face resulting from collaboration with different types of actors. Building on studies from the public and private sector, the characteristics of collaboration between citizens and public organizations are discussed and measures to address these characteristics are proposed. Based on these findings, different dimensions of an organizational citizen-centered collaborative capacity are identified. The result of this study is a conceptualization of such a collaborative capacity, which includes the dimensions of structuring, motivating, applying, and assessing. It is further argued that the ability to motivate external participants is especially important for citizen-centered collaborative capacity.     

Introduction to the Symposium on Exploring the Complexities of Performance Management

ABSTRACT

The editors of this symposium hope that this collection of articles can help advance the public administration literature stream across the multiple organizational and cultural settings in which these performance management studies were conducted. However, this symposium also focused on articles that can help advance the practice of performance management, where specific recommendations are needed to help public officials collect, analyze, and use meaningful outcome measures specifically for the benefits for making better management and policy decisions.     

An Empirical Examination of Partnership Frequency and Design within International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs)

Despite the increase in public and nonprofit partnerships, there is little understanding of the organizational factors associated with partnership frequency and design. Through negative binomial and multinomial logistic regressions, this study analyzes data from interviews with 149 leaders of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), to first examine partnership frequency, and to then examine the formation of different partnerships structures: principal-based partnerships, agent-based partnerships, and shared power-based partnerships. The findings suggest that improving results and increasing funding are the primary goals of partnership adoption, and that the most management intensive forms of partnerships are only adopted when INGOs have sufficient organizational capacity.     

A Knowledge Management and Organizational Intelligence Model for Public Administration

This study explores the development of a KM-OI model and empirically tests, using structure equation modeling (SEM), nine hypotheses related to the following research questions: RQ1: To what extent does organizational culture impact strategy structure learning with environment and information technology?; RQ2: To what extent does information technology impact learning with environment?; RQ3: To what extent does strategy structure, learning with environment impact policies and practices of KM?; RQ4: To what extent do policies and practices of KM impact organizational intelligence? Based on the results of a web survey applied in two of the six largest economies, Germany and Brazil, the article shows the importance of KM and OI for public administration and concludes that the KM-OI model is useful to identify influential factors that must be taken into consideration to improve the processes of creation (KM) and application of knowledge (OI).     

Performance and Equality in Public Sector Wages

Abstract

The present paper describes how democratic values—reflected by work equality values—paired with the organizational performance characteristics—defined by the height of organizational inputs and outputs—affect gender differences in wages. It is suggested here that despite the democratic conception of the public sector's equal employment opportunities, variations in the organizational performance of 83 local authorities account for gender differences in wages. The study assumes that organizational inputs (type and level of resources) and outputs (type and level of provided services) generate gender differences in individual earnings, when controlling for human capital factors. The results show that variations in organizational performance affect women's but not men's wages. However, the effect of individual level (demographic, human capital and employment) characteristics, reflecting the meritocracy‐based and democratic nature of public sector employment rather than the level of organizational performance explains most of the variance in gender differences in wages. These results point to the slow shift from the principle of administrative values of democracy and equality to the adoption of performance‐related mechanisms in the determination of public sector wages.     

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: ADDED VALUE BY ORGANIZATIONAL FORM OR MANAGEMENT?

The central idea of public private partnerships (PPPs) is that added value can be achieved from greater co‐operation between public and private actors. In general, the literature speaks of PPPs in which public and private actors develop a more or less sustainable co‐operation through which they realize products, services, or policies together, share risks, and develop an organizational form to arrange this. The assumption is that a higher degree of PPP leads to more and better outcomes because public and private actors combine their knowledge and resources. One can find a wide array of organizational forms in which this co‐operation is organized and the literature pays a great deal of attention to these forms. But is this organizational form really so important, or are the intensity and type of managerial strategies more important for the outcomes? Based on a large survey of individuals involved in Dutch environmental projects, we show that although the degree of PPP correlates positively with the outcomes of projects, this correlation disappears when we include in the analysis the number of managerial strategies employed. The organizational form does not have significant impact on outcomes and the conclusion we draw is that scholars and practitioners of public private partnerships should pay greater attention to the managerial efforts necessary to develop and implement PPPs.     

Determinants of Performance in Government: Focusing on the Effect of Organizational Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

Conflicts and politics in organizations are common in both the public and private sectors. However, there are few comprehensive studies regarding the relationship between politics, conflicts, and outcomes in the public sector. Therefore, this study sought to empirically explore the relationships between organizational performance, organizational conflicts, and organizational politics in the public sector. To analyze the effects of organizational politics and conflicts on performance in government organizations, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed. The results indicated that organizational politics and relationship conflicts negatively affect organizational performance.     

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.     

Toward a micro-level perspective of organizational publicness: Felt organizational publicness in the eyes of state government employees

Organizational publicness is a foundational construct for public administration. It has largely been conceptualized deductively and focuses mostly on the macro- and meso-levels of analysis, leaving under-explored how public employees perceive it at the micro-level. Through a grounded theory analysis of state government employees' interview data, this study aims to uncover public officials' perceptions about organizational publicness. We find that participants' perception of organizational publicness is a composite of five themes: four represent the core meanings of felt organizational publicness, essentially reflecting a cultural/ethical perspective (purpose, value, behavior, and outcome), and one represents the context of the meanings (external environment). Linking the dimensions with the literature and publicness at other analytical levels, we discuss the findings' implications. We emphasize that employee perceptions of organizational publicness play an important role in achieving realized publicness.     

How to Make the Mix Matter: A Case Study of Post-Transformational Leadership in Hybrid Public Management

The purpose of this article is to explain how public managers can influence the mix of institutional logics in a process of organizational change. To do this, the concept of post-transformational leadership is related to institutional logics. The article is based on a case study of the Danish Crime Prevention Council. The study shows how post-transformative leaders are urged to move from strategies of collaboration to strategies of manipulation, hypocrisy, and the hijacking of institutional logics.