Testing the Influence of Autocratic Leadership,Democratic Leadership,and Public Service Motivation on Citizen Ratings of An Agency Head’s Performance

Abstract

Research is lacking concerning the impact of leadership styles on citizen attitudes toward the performance of government leaders. To address this gap, an online experimental survey was conducted to determine the effect of leadership styles on respondents’ perceptions regarding a fictitious superintendent’s performance in a school district. The results demonstrate that democratic leadership practices enhanced the performance reviews of the superintendent, while autocratic leadership practices decreased them. Respondents’ level of public service motivation (PSM) was also found to have a positive effect on the superintendent’s performance ratings. Furthermore, democratic leadership style moderated the relationship between PSM and the performance ratings assigned by respondents. In particular, individuals with high PSM rated the performance of democratic leaders higher as compared to individuals with low PSM. However, autocratic leadership was not found to moderate the relationship between PSM and the superintendent’s performance. These results are thoroughly discussed in the paper.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Management of Australian Water Utilities: The Significance of Transactional and Transformational Leadership

What organisational factor has the most significant impact on the management of water utilities? This article seeks the views of middle managers in several water utilities across four Australian states to address this question. It also examines their views of leadership in their organisation. It draws upon Bass's full‐range leadership theory to examine their views on three models of leadership: transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and a combination of both transactional and transformational leadership. The respondents identify leadership as the most critical enabling factor for the effective management of water utilities. They believe that effective leadership requires a mix of transactional and transformational leadership skills. They state that their supervisor's leadership skills are below their expectation of an effective leader. These leadership issues are discussed in the article.     

Governance Disclosure on the Internet: The Case of Australian State Government Departments

This paper examines corporate governance disclosures on the websites of Australian state government departments. The study focuses on the nature and extent of governance information and the ease of finding this information directly on department websites and also in annual reports which are downloadable from websites. Our sample comprises six departments from each of the six states in Australia, giving a sample size of 36 departments. Our findings indicate considerable variability in both the level of disclosure and the accessibility of the information disclosed. The study also highlights a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of governance and what governance comprises, together with the need for a more structured approach to communicating governance information to stakeholders.     

公共部门人力资源绩效管理问题及对策

本文分析了我国公共部门人力资源绩效管理的现状与不足,提出了完善公共部门人力资源绩效管理的对策。通过建立和完善绩效管理体系,提高人力资源管理者的能力水平,构建科学合理的绩效目标和考核标准,改进考核方法,并且加强绩效考核结果的应用,改进个人绩效。     

Size Matters: Toward a Contingency Theory of Diversity Effects on Performance

Abstract

This study examines the diversity-performance link by focusing on two types of diversity—gender and functional—in the context of governing boards of 24 quasi-government agencies in Korea over 16?years (2000–2015). Although public management scholarship contains evidence regarding the importance of diversity in public organizations, there is little consensus on what constitutes diversity and how it affects public sector performance. This study expands the scope of dialogues by highlighting multidimensional characteristics of diversity and the contingent nature of diversity effects. Multiplicative interaction models confirm that there are distinctive effects of different types of diversity on performance, and the relationship is moderated by the size of the group to which minorities belong. While the effect of board gender diversity is limited in our data, the effect of having a female chief executive is positively significant with decreasing marginal effect as the number of board members increases. On the other hand, the relationship of functional diversity in the boardroom to agency performance is negative, while the negative marginal effect decreases and becomes positive when board size rises above a critical number.     

Liberal Democrat Leadership: The Cases of Ashdown and Kennedy

Effective leadership of the Liberal Democrats requires a combination of strengths: communications skills, a clear agenda, the ability to manage the party and personal abilities, including stamina, self-confidence and a love for the party itself. This article assesses Paddy Ashdown's and Charles Kennedy's periods as leader. It concludes that the first two phases of Ashdown's leadership were successful: he first ensured the party's survival and then positioned it so that it was able to benefit from the rise in support for the centre-left without being squeezed out by Labour. In the third phase, however, the attempt to deliver a common agenda with Labour was a failure, and Ashdown increasingly lost touch with his own party. Kennedy's first two years as leader were also relatively successful, but after that his leadership fell apart, suffering from a lack of an agenda, a failure of party management, a weakness in communication skills and a lack of self-confidence. His underlying problem was not alcoholism; it was that he was not capable of being an effective leader.     

Public Sector Change,Organisational Culture and Financial Information: A Study of Local Government

Local government has undergone substantial change in Victoria, but the reforms have not necessarily resulted in improved financial management practices. This article examines the organisational culture of a sample of local governments, the critical events which have impacted on them, and their use of accounting, budgetary and financial (ABF) information. We find that despite the change process, organisational culture is not focused on competitive practices, although compulsory competitive tendering remains the most influential event. Consistent with the aims of reform, the quality and use of ABF information has improved over the last decade. This article will be of interest to those in government wishing to implement change programs aimed at increasing financial resource use efficiency.     

A Tale of Two Leaders: Leadership and Cultural Change at the New Zealand Treasury

Differences in the transformational leadership exercised at the New Zealand Treasury (NZT) by two Secretaries – Henry Lang (1969-1973) and Graham Scott (1986-1996) – are related to differences in their paradigmatic situation rather than a shift away from a serial loyalist public service bargain that caused both to direct their leadership initiatives toward developing and maintaining the trust successive finance ministers placed in NZT advisors. Thus while Lang's leadership was directed toward expanding the reporting role of the NZT to the limits of what could be expected under a relatively stable market failure policy paradigm, the subsequent erosion of the authority of this paradigm meant that, under Scott's leadership, the NZT reinvented itself to avoid implication in a failure to contribute to the policy leadership required to advance a coherent reform strategy.     

Managing Performance at Local Government Level: The Cases of the City of Brisbane and the City of Melbourne

Local governments have been involved in a continuous reform process during recent decades. In many cases, this process has focused on the introduction of performance measurement and management. Reforms have evolved from the mere use of indicators to integrated management systems. In this article, the Balanced Scorecard, a system designed to answer the need for integrated management systems, is used as the framework to analyse how local governments have managed the use of performance management systems. The demands for better public performance, for greater customer focus, for enhanced decision-making and for increased responsiveness have an important role in the design of performance management systems. In addition, a perceived crisis in the area of management can act as catalyst for the implementation.     

美国基层政府行政绩效考评实践及其启示

WANG Jian-min;XIAO Zhi-kang;XIAO Ming-zheng     

Confronting the Governance Challenges of Developing Nigeria's Extractive Industry: Policy and Performance in the Oil and Gas Sector1

The issue of economic growth and human development has been a central concern in the oil and gas sector of Nigeria's extractive industry, and this has featured prominently in the agitations and generalized restiveness in the Niger Delta, the oil‐producing region. While many studies have focused on these problems, policies aimed at confronting them have not received much broad attention. This article bridges this research gap by holistically focusing on the solution to the problem. In doing this, the article examines the policies during the Obasanjo administration from 1999 to 2007 in order to critically assess the efficacy or inefficiency of the policies in reversing the general problem now known as the “resource curse,” and to offer a better understanding of the deeper political, social, and economic issues that drive outcomes. The article finds that while significant efforts were made to avoid the boom and bust cycle of oil and lower volatility by de‐linking public expenditure from oil revenue through the “oil‐price‐based fiscal rule,” generally, progress in this area was not matched by improvement in the other areas examined by this study, notably peace and safety of lives and oil/gas installations, the development of the oil‐producing region, environmental security and sustainability, and the transparent and accountable use of oil/gas revenues.     

Destroying one Public Service Bargain Without Making Another: A Comment on Lowe and Pemberton,The Official History of the British Civil Service,Volume II: 1982–1997

This article responds to Lowe and Pemberton's second volume on the history of the civil service and analyses fundamental shifts in British governance at the centre that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. The traditional ‘public service bargain’ (PSB) that underpinned the relationship between ministers and officials has been repeatedly undermined. The article examines how far prior civil service reforms relate to the changes of the contemporary era instigated by Conservative‐led governments since 2010. As Lowe and Pemberton's work illustrates, the impulse to reform the state and the managerial reforms it unleashed were long in the making. Their legacy can be traced to the emergence of Thatcherism after 1979. The core argument of the article is that the more recent efforts of the Johnson administration to transform the state and undermine the PBS were scarcely original. Rather, they consolidated and drew upon earlier initiatives.     

The impact of employee perception on the successful institutionalisation and implementation of performance management systems in developing countries: The perspective from Ghana's public service

Performance management (PM) has become a key instrument in the quest to ensure optimal operations by organisations in the public sector. Some scholars, though, believe that PM has failed because of employees' negative perception and management's exclusion of employees from its development. Studies on the relationship between employee perception of PM and its effectiveness in the public sector are limited. We argue that management must value employee perception more highly than they do at present because it is unlikely employees would be willing to take an active part in implementing a change with which they disagree or that they see as having no value. This study examines the effect of employees' perception on the institutionalisation and implementation of PM in developing countries, with specific reference to Ghana.     

Linking transformational leadership and value congruence among Chinese police force: The mediating role of goal clarity and the moderating role of public service motivation

Although claimed as an important value assimilating factor within public administration, transformational leadership's effect over value congruence receives limited empirical investigation. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of this effect are underspecified. Drawing from an interactionist perspective whereby value congruence is the joint product of situational influence and individual characteristic, this study investigates the relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence focusing on the mediating role of goal clarity and the moderating role of public service motivation (PSM). The analysis of data collected from a sample of 420 Chinese police officers indicates that goal clarity partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence. In addition, PSM moderates the relationship between goal clarity and value congruence such that the relationship is stronger when PSM is high. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Innovative work behaviour in the public sector: The roles of task characteristics,social support,and proactivity

This study examines the roles of task characteristics, organisational social support, and individual proactivity on innovative work behaviour (IWB) in the public sector. Analysing empirical data from 154 employees from a government agency in Australia, we found that task characteristics, organisational social support, and proactive personality have a positive impact on IWB. Proactive personality is also found to be a moderator in the relationship between task characteristics and IWB. The findings suggest the need to design human resource practices that better identify proactive and innovative job applicants in the recruitment and selection process. Further, we highlight the requirement to organise and design work that recognises the need to develop social support to improve IWB. The implications of the study for further research on IWB are discussed.     

Structural Changes to the Public Sector and Cultural Incompatibility: The Consequences of Inadequate Cultural Integration

Structural changes are commonly undertaken to achieve gains, such as enhanced efficiency and performance. In this paper, we explore the cultural issues associated with a structural change in the Australian Public Service. We argue that cultural differences across merged functions were disruptive and challenging to overcome. We posit, however, that these challenges were exacerbated by the lack of systemic effort to integrate cultures, thus impeding synergy realization. Our findings are consistent with the private sector literature that warns mergers and acquisitions undertaken with too much haste and without adequate planning can lead to cultural issues when not managed appropriately.     

The use of mindfulness to promote ethical decision making and behavior: Empirical evidence from the public sector in Thailand

The study has two main purposes. First, the study explores core ethical values and behaviors from the perspective of Thai public service organizational leaders. Second, the study investigates the extent to which public sector leaders in Thailand consider Buddhist-based mindfulness practice to be a potentially effective mechanism for reinforcing core ethical values and behaviors in the public sector in Thailand. Using interview data derived from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 senior public sector officials in Thailand, the analysis elicits four dimensions of core ethical values and behaviors that are perceived by Thai public service organizational leaders as central to ethical behavior in the public sector. The study also sheds light on the interviewees' positive perceptions towards mindfulness and the role its associated practices can play in promoting ethical decision making and behavior in the public sector in Thailand.     

Termination Theory and National Climate Change Mitigation Programs: The Case of New Zealand

In 2008 New Zealand (NZ) changed from a Labour‐led to a National‐led government, and this resulted in a shift to government's carbon emission mitigation strategy, including the abandonment of the Communities for Climate Protection (CCP) and the Carbon Neutral Public Service (CNPS) programs. Using deLeon's seminal model for program termination, the objective of this research is to determine why NZ's newly elected government discontinued these initiatives. This empirical research is investigative and probing, and comprises a series of semi‐structured interviews with senior managers responsible for the delivery of the respective program within their organization. The architects of each program are also investigated. In the end, this study finds that while economic constraints and programmatic inefficiencies may have played a contributing role, political ideology is the primary rationale for the termination of the CNPS and the CCP‐NZ programs.