Bureaucracy,inefficiency, and time

This paper examines the bureaucrat's choice between devoting resources to economic rents (organizational slack) and maximizing the budget of the agency. A new model of bureaucracy is developed using utility rather than a demand function as its foundation. It is shown that increases in income alter the slack-budget constraint to favor organizational slack over budget-maximization. Modern federal bureaucracies in the U.S. are predicted to be slack-maximizing and X-inefficient.     

Governmental participation and the organizational adaptation of Green parties: On access, slack, overload and distress

Abstract.  This article explores the reciprocal links between the organizational transformation of Western European Green parties and their governmental experience. On the one hand, a series of hypotheses with regards to the possible link between prior organizational adaptation and eventual access to governmental participation are examined. On the other, the opposite question is addressed: that of the potential impact of governmental participation – and, more recently, exit from government – on further organizational adaptation. Following both a qualitative and a qualitative comparative (QCA) analysis, one ultimately identifies a link between prior organizational adaptation and eventual access to government, but a much more indirect and contrasted link between governmental participation (and exit from government) and further organizational adaptation.     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

Deadlines,routines, and change

Routines, the habitual and predictable behavior patterns of an organization, play central roles in both maintaining organizational performance and in adapting such performance to changing conditions. Deadlines interact with routines in important ways in influencing the course of organizational adaptation. This paper examines the role of routines and deadlines in influencing change in a regulatory program. It describes the adaptation of routines in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) water pollution and pesticide programs in response to pressures and deadlines imposed by Congress, the courts, and the White House. The programs analyzed offer contrasting glimpses of the effects of routines on organizational change. Routines may be collective and shared by the members of an organization or unique to the specific groups or subgroups within it. When the organization primarily has widely-shared routines, few options will be perceived; consequently, collective routines tend to blunt the impact of pressures for change. On the other hand, routines that become fragmented, diverse, and individual in the face of repeated external pressures may facilitate change.     

Corporate social responsibility commitment of small‐to‐medium enterprises and organizational competitive differentiation: Stakeholder pressure,market orientation,and socioeconomic context effects

This paper aims to examine the role of stakeholder pressure and market orientation in explaining the corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments and the organizational competitive differentiation of small and medium enterprises. The socioeconomic context, that is, favorable versus unfavorable, was used as a moderator in above links. The results verify the strong influence of stakeholder's pressure on CSR commitments and the influence of stakeholder pressure and market orientation on organizational competitive differentiation. The socioeconomic context confirms to have a significant moderating role in the hypothesized links. In a favorable context, stakeholder pressure turns out to be relevant in explaining CSR commitments and the organizational competitive differentiation, and CSR commitments itself also have a significantly positive effect on organizational competitive differentiation. In an unfavorable context, market orientation provides a significantly positive support to CSR commitments and organizational competitive differentiation.     

Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership,Public Service Motivation,and Mission Valence

This article contributes to our understanding of public service motivation and leadership by investigating ways in which organizational leaders can reinforce and even augment the potential effects of public service motivation on employees’ attraction to the organization’s mission (mission valence). The results contribute to two research questions. First, the findings provide new evidence on the sources of public service motivation. The authors find that transformational leadership is an organizational factor associated with higher public service motivation. Second, the article examines the relationship between transformational leadership and mission valence. The authors find that transformational leadership has an important indirect effect on mission valence through its influence on clarifying organizational goals and fostering public service motivation.     

Downsizing,competition, and organizational change in government: Is necessity the mother of invention?

One answer to the question of why government organizations don't perform better—common in academic “public choice” literature but also in folk wisdom—is that resources come too easily, independent of performance. Some businessmanagement literature suggests that a crisis in resource flows can force successful change—”necessity is the mother of invention.” However, the literature also presents an alternative view: that crisis promotes rigid preprogrammed responses, not new ways of behaving. This paper examines the impact of crisis on organizational change in government by examining an organizational change effort in the U.S. federal government (procurement reform during the 1990s) that occurred simultaneously with an organizational crisis involving workforce downsizing and introduction of competition for some buying offices. Using a dataset consisting of a survey of approximately 1,600 frontline government contracting officials, the impact of variation in crisis at different buying offices on variation in behavior change is examined. Necessity was found to be the mother of invention, not rigidity. However, these effects were counteracted by two negative effects of crisis on organizational change: 1) employee resentment over violation of a “social contract at work” reduced behavior change, 2) employee association of the change effort with downsizing reduced attitudinal support for the change, which translated into reduced behavior change. On balance, crisis inhibited organizational change, rather than promoting it. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Board Diversity,Stakeholder Representation,and Collaborative Performance in Community Mediation Centers

Does board diversity or representativeness influence organizational performance? Though it is understudied in both the public and the nonprofit sectors, learning more about this critical subject can enhance organizational performance within highly collaborative settings. Community mediation centers, which rely on multiple public and private resources to meet their programmatic objectives, provide excellent case studies for analyzing the impact of different kinds of interorganizational linkages on organizational performance. A multitheoretic view incorporating agency, resource dependence, and stakeholder perspectives is employed through a national sample and a two‐stage analysis using a logic model to test the cumulative impact of board characteristics and interorganizational relationships on organizational outcomes. Organizations’ collaborative capacity depends on several kinds of boundary‐spanning activities, including network ties, revenue sources, and the number of stakeholder groups represented on the board.     

Political Pressure,Conformity Pressure,and Performance Information as Drivers of Public Sector Innovation Adoption

Why public organizations adopt and abandon organizational innovations is a key question for any endeavor to explain large-scale developments in the public sector. Supplementing research within public administration on innovation with the related literature on policy diffusion, this article examines how external factors such as conformity pressure from institutionalized models, performance information from other organizations, and political pressure affect innovation adoption. By the use of two survey experiments in very different political contexts—Texas and Denmark—and a difference-in-differences analysis exploiting a reform of the political governance of public schools in Denmark, we find that public managers respond to political pressure. We find no indications that they emulate institutionalized models or learn from performance information from other organizations when they adopt organizational innovations. The results thereby point to political pressure as an important factor behind large-scale adoptions of organizational innovations in the public sector.     

Reemployment Services in the Netherlands: A Comparative Study of Bureaucratic, Market, and Network Forms of Organization

Progress in New Public Management research requires careful comparison of different organizational approaches to public tasks, preferably within a single political and institutional setting. This paper presents a study of three approaches to reemployment services, a recent development in the Netherlands. How do bureaucratic, networked, and market‐based forms of organization function with regard to the new public aim of second‐tier reemployment in the Netherlands? It appears that there is no simple dependence between performance and instrumental or organizational features. Even in the setting of a single welfare state, intricate interactions exist between performance, stakeholder interests, and institutional conditions. Given the importance of these interactions, New Public Management research would benefit by shifting focus away from organizational performance toward a “politics of institutional structuring.”     

Doing Things Right: Effectiveness in Local Nonprofit Organizations, A Panel Study

This study investigates whether nonprofit organizational effectiveness is judged consistently by differing constituencies and whether changes in board effectiveness and overall organizational effectiveness (judged by differing constituencies) are the result of changes in the use of practices regarded as the "right way" to manage. The results show that different constituencies judged the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations differently, at both periods; that a change in the use of correct board practices over time, controlling for board effectiveness at time 1, was not related to board effectiveness at time 2; and that a change in the use of correct management practices, controlling for organizational effectiveness at time 1, was not related to organizational effectiveness at time 2, except for board members. Implications of the results are considered. Claims about best practices for nonprofit boards and organizations must be evaluated more critically. Finding the right fit among practices is more important than doing things the "right way.     

Race,associational involvement,and political participation

Previous research on racial differences in group affiliation and activism examines the role of organizational involvement both as a form of social participation and as an independent predictor of political participation. This study is based on data from a national sample of the 1987 adult population that replicated the basic measures of social and political participation from Verba and Nie’s classic study. We separate our respondents into homogeneous racial groups and specify organizational participation by type of association to determine which group joins what organization and the relevance of such patterns for involvement in the polity. Although our findings only provide mixed support for the claim advanced by other scholars that Blacks’ social activity exceeds or equals that of Whites once controls for sociodemographic status are taken into consideration, these results provide clear evidence that Black and White organizations differ in their capacity to motivate their members for political activity.     

Organizational Influences,Public Service Motivation and Work Outcomes: An Australian Study

ABSTRACT

This research examines the influence of organizational factors—intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, work relations with management, and work relations with co-workers—on the relationship between public service motivation (PSM) and two work outcomes: job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Using data from the 2005 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes of over 2,200 employees in the Australian public and private sectors, this study found a direct and significant association between the two work outcomes and PSM (and the PSM-fit variable). Despite their significant and direct effects on the work outcomes, the organizational factors did not show any significant moderating effects on the relationships between PSM-fit and the two work outcomes.     

Social Entrepreneurship,Entrepreneurship, Collectivism,and Everything in Between: Prototypes and Continuous Dimensions

This article uses prototypes and continuous dimensions to place social entrepreneurship in relation to other organizational forms. This approach is more fruitful than classical attempts to stipulate essential characteristics and establish boundaries. A prototype and continuous dimension approach allows consideration of the way social entrepreneurship functions similarly to and differently from related concepts, such as traditional entrepreneurship, public social services, and collectivism. These categories can be distinguished according to the degree to which control over the way value is created, allocated, and distributed occurs socially or entrepreneurially. This approach offers the additional advantage of making the concept more precise, as subdimensions clarify the relationship to practices such as volunteerism and theories such as antidevelopment. By mapping the network of organizational forms in which social entrepreneurship can be located, we can focus on the viability and advisability of different ways of solving social problems.     

Establishing A Mission-Based Culture: Analyzing the Relation Between Intra-Organizational Socialization Agents,Mission Valence,Public Service Motivation,Goal Clarity and Work Impact

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to our understanding of how organizations can craft a mission-based culture by examining the relationship between mission valence, PSM, goal clarity, and work impact. More specifically, the study assesses how value-laden communication with multiple intra-organizational socialization referents is related with the cited variables. The developed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling and a sample of 585 non-managerial employees employed by a public welfare organization. The findings confirm the claim that position in an organizational hierarchy is not likely to influence the analyzed relationships. The magnitude of the relationships, however, diverges. In contrast to previous research, the study results indicate that, in the case of lower-level employees, PSM is the most powerful predictor of mission valence. Furthermore, the results indicate that exposure to organizational values via interaction with internal socialization agents is positively related with their perceived importance. The results thus not only confirm the relevance of incorporating the institutional setting when analyzing mission valence, but also provide further proof for an institutional theory of PSM by highlighting that different organizational socialization agents could play a distinctive role in crafting PSM and a mission-based culture.     

A confusion,not a system: the organizational evolution of strategic intelligence assessment in Canada, 1943 to 2003

Recently released documentation has for the first time made it possible to describe the organizational evolution of strategic intelligence assessment in Canada. During the 60-year period surveyed in this article, the analytical groups involved in strategic assessment and the interdepartmental intelligence committee structure underwent a number of changes. These were almost invariably incremental steps—shaped by bureaucratic factors and resource constraints—rather than initiatives guided by a broader vision of the role of intelligence assessment in support of Canadian foreign and defence policy. This organizational study provides the foundation for long-overdue research into the foreign intelligence function in Canada.     

Politics and the organization of collective action: The case of Nigeria, 1960–1975

The case of Nigeria provides support for an organizational conception of collective action. Such a conception rests on the notion that collective events—riots, demonstrations, strikes, marches, and violent confrontations—are the accompanying manifestations of routine politics and are instigated by many of the same organizations that sponsor nonviolent, ordinary political and economic activity. It is argued that collective action is organized action; its vehicles are mainly preexisting organizations that determine the location and timing of collective action, select the forms of contention, articulate the issues, and choose the targets of collective protest. It is further argued that insofar as a society's organizational base determines the shape of collective action, then political policies that affect the society's organizational composition will have a corresponding effect on the shape of collective action. That is, policies of organizational repression and facilitation will decrease or increase associated forms of collective action.     

Measurement of Performance Management System for High Organizational Achievement in State-Owned Enterprises,Lao PDR

This study attempts to measure the performance appraisals system of the state-owned enterprises in Vientiane Capital City from their operation. Meanwhile, the state-owned enterprise performances are measured through standard evaluation form, annual report, and technical performance evaluation. The data used in this analysis are primary data provided through a questionnaire by the state-owned enterprises in Vientiane Capital City, the capital of the Lao PDR. The results are mixed results. On the positive side, the operation performance evaluation of the state-owned enterprises focuses more on profit making, and encourages the directors, chiefs, and staff toward continuous improvement in their operation. On the negative side, the state-own enterprises face some risks as a result of operation performance evaluation.     

Markets,Hierarchies, and Networks: An Agent‐Based Organizational Ecology

Markets, hierarchies, and networks are widely understood to be the three primary forms of social organization. In this article, we study the choice between these forms in a general, agent‐based model (ABM) of cooperation. The organizational ecology is the product, an emergent property, of the set of choices made by agents contingent on their individual attributes and beliefs about the population of agents. This is one of the first attempts to theorize explicitly the choice between different organizational forms, especially networks and hierarchies, and certainly the first to do so in an ABM. The insights of the model are applied to current research on transnational networks, social capital, and the sources of hierarchy and especially autocracy.     

Social Development and Political Participation: Class, Organizations and Sex

The relationship between social development and political participation has been described by Nie, Powell, and Prewitt in terms of two major contentions: (1) social development leads to increases in both the relative size of the middle class and the scope of the organizational infrastructure; (2) both factors lead in turn to higher rates of political participation, but the one - socioeconomic status - is mediated by civic attitudes, while the other - organizational involvement - is not. In trying to assess these contentions in relation to Norway, the present study arrives at several interesting, but disparate, conclusions: (a) existing findings with relevance for the problem (Martinussen's Distant Democracy ) are open to reinterpretation; (b) in a highly developed corporate-pluralist state such as Norway, organizational involvement must be distinguished as to its dependent-variable and independent-variable characteristics; (c) occupational status must be problematized as a sexist indicator; (d) class characteristics are not important determinants of participation in Norway, but sex is; (e) in relation to involvement in the electoral channel, civic attitudes do not mediate class position as much as they mediate sex; and (f) in relation to involvement in the corporate (interest-group) channel, neither sex nor class are significantly mediated by attitudes. Finally, it is pointed out that the relevance of these findings for the Nie-Powell-Prewitt position is uncertain, due to the problematic operationalization of both sex and organizational involvement in the original study*.