Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.     

Who Does It Better? Comparing Immigration Detention Facility Performance in an Intergovernmental and Intersectoral Context

Contracting for prison services has been a topic of discussion for decades. Absent from this discussion is the relationship between contracting for immigration detention and confinement quality, a topic that has gained relevance as the detained immigrant population recently surpassed 440,000 per year. Detaining immigrants presents unique challenges because of detainee characteristics, the performance standards governing facilities, and the intersectoral and intergovernmental arrangements used to manage detention facilities. This research conducts the first-known large-N study that evaluates the confinement quality of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention facilities to determine the effect, if any, of contracting on performance. The findings suggest that all detention facilities have deficiencies that threaten the well-being of detained immigrants, but, broadly, privately contracted detention facility environments are less safe and secure than their public counterparts. The authors use contracting theory to explain why this performance disparity might exist and conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of this research.     

Does Public Service Motivation Lead to Budget Maximization? Evidence from an Experiment

ABSTRACT

One of the most enduring theories in public management is Niskanen's model of the budget-maximizing bureaucrat. While popular, the image of bureaucrats relentlessly advocating for larger budgets has been frequently attacked. A chief criticism is that the assumption of self-interest does not align with budget maximization, since bureaucrats have little direct way to benefit from larger budgets. A more plausible assumption that offers a stronger causal logic for maximization behavior is that bureaucrats are motivated to help others. If they believe that spending on public goods is beneficial to society, public employees may be likely to advocate for larger budgets. Using vignette-experiment methodology, this article finds that individuals with higher levels of public service motivation do not advocate for significantly higher budgets. The results undercut an alternative theoretical means to support Niskanen's original theory, thereby further undermining the budget maximization model.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of International Public Management Journal for the following free supplemental resource: Survey Text with Vignettes.]     

Better Performance with Performance Budgeting? Analyzing Cases of Success and Failure in Public Administrations

ABSTRACT

The introduction of performance budgeting has substantially changed the working environment of public managers. Changes include a shift from input to outcome orientation as well as more freedom to manage. However, current public management theories are unable to explain why performance budgeting sometimes fails. This article proposes a causal model that integrates three contextual factors and two individual factors in order to explain the diverse results. The model is tested with cases generated from interviews with Swiss public managers. The compiled data suggests that the type of tasks in a department as an antecedent variable and the perceived freedom of public managers have a dominating influence on the perceived reform outcome. Other factors, such as the behavior of the legislature, the project management and the prior career of managers, tend to be less important. These results contribute to the scientific discourse about success factors for performance budgeting in public administrations.     

Does Stimulating Physical Activity Affect School Performance?

This paper investigates whether encouraging children to become more physically active in their everyday life affects their primary school performance. We use data from a field quasi-experiment called the Active Living Program, which aimed to increase active modes of transportation to school and active play among 8- to 12-year-olds living in low socioeconomic status (SES) areas in the Netherlands. Difference-in-differences estimations reveal that while the interventions increase time spent on physical activity during school hours, they negatively affect school performance, especially among the worst-performing students. Further analyses reveal that increased restlessness during instruction time is a potential mechanism for this negative effect. Our results suggest that the commonly found positive effects of exercising or participating in sports on educational outcomes may not be generalizable to physical activity in everyday life. Policymakers and educators who seek to increase physical activity in everyday life need to weigh the health and well-being benefits against the probability of increasing inequality in school performance.     

Corruption,Connections and Transparency: Does a Better Screen Imply a Better Scene?

A higher level of transparency in decision making increases the probability that corruption or wrongdoing is detected. It may also improve outsiders' information about the identities of key decision makers, thereby enhance incentives to establish “connections” for corruption. The connections effect may dominate the detection effect for local improvement in transparency and generate an increase in corruption, a prediction sharply in contrast with standard theories of transparency.     

Does Training Matter? Evidence from Performance Management Reforms

Training is much discussed but rarely studied in public management. Using multiple waves of survey data, the authors examine the effects of training on the implementation of performance management reforms in the U.S. federal government, asking whether those exposed to training are more likely to use performance data and strategic goals when making decisions. Training is positively associated with reform implementation, but there is little evidence that this association can be explained by the development of specific capacities to overcome performance management challenges. The findings offer two implications for the practice and study of training. The authors propose that training is likely to succeed if it is designed and funded to close specific capacity gaps needed for successful reform implementation. However, it is also necessary to better understand alternative causal mechanisms by which training facilitates reform implementation, such as explaining and justifying reforms.

Practitioner Points

• Training can facilitate the implementation of new policies by providing information about the policies, justifying why they are needed, and giving employees the capacity to put the new policies in place.
• Using training to build specific employee capacities is more complex, resource intensive, and rare than using training to provide information and justify reforms.
• Effective training in government requires not just more resources but also better understanding of the specific capacities needed and how to create them—research can help by identifying the most significant capacity gaps in policy implementation.

     

The Future of Social Policy in Scotland: Will Further Devolved Powers Lead to Better Social Policies for Disabled People?

Scotland has laid claim to being ‘different’ from the rest of the UK with regards to disability policy. This article examines the evidence for that with regard to long‐term and social care, and discusses the possibilities opened up by the devolution of disability benefits. It asks whether Scotland will demonstrate policy divergence from the rest of the UK, and whether that is likely to be beneficial for disabled people. It argues that Scotland has the potential to create better social policies for disabled people, but faces significant challenges in doing so.     

Does Involvement in Performance Management Routines Encourage Performance Information Use? Evaluating GPRA and PART

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 and the George W. Bush administration’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) established new routines that were intended to foster performance management practices. Using data from two surveys, the authors find that the involvement of agency employees in GPRA processes and PART reviews generally had little direct effect on performance information use once other factors are accounted for. The main exception is that managerial involvement in GPRA processes and PART reviews is associated with the use of performance data to refine measures and goals. This reflects the limits of government‐wide reform efforts that depend on difficult‐to‐observe bureaucratic behavior. The authors also find that a series of organizational factors—leadership commitment to results, learning routines led by supervisors, the motivational nature of the task, and the ability to link measures to actions—are positive predictors of performance information use.     

Faster? Cheaper? Better? Using ADR to Resolve Federal Sector EEO Complaints

This article examines the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Management Directive 110, which requires all federal agencies to offer alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to employees with equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaints. Specifically, the article examines federal sector EEO complaint processing before and after the passage of Management Directive 110 and compares the traditional EEO procedure with the use of ADR on several indicators of case processing and case outcomes. Findings are reported in three sections: an overall analysis, an analysis of the informal stage of the process, and an analysis of the formal stage of the process. The article concludes with a discussion and directions for future research.     

Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement: Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance of Management Authority?

Public sector employees have traditionally enjoyed substantial influence and bargaining power in organizational decision making, but few studies have investigated the formation of employee acceptance of management authority. Drawing on the “romance of leadership” perspective, the authors argue that performance information shapes employee attributions of leader quality and perceptions of a need for change in ways that affect their acceptance of management authority, conceptualized using Simon's notion of a “zone of acceptance.” A survey experiment was conducted among 1,740 teachers, randomly assigning true performance information about each respondent's own school. When employees were exposed to signals showing low or high performance, their acceptance of management authority increased, whereas average performance signals reduced employee acceptance of management authority. The findings suggest that performance measurement can alter public sector authority relations and have implications regarding how public managers can use performance information strategically to gain acceptance of management authority and organizational change.     

Does Effective Espionage Lead to Success in Science and Technology? Lessons from the East German Ministry for State Security

This article explores the question of whether effective scientific-technical intelligence can enhance an economic and technological level of a country. It opens with a general discussion of Eastern Bloc scientific-technical espionage, then presents some common elements of effective espionage and turns to the East German Ministry for State Security's Sector for Science and Technology in order to explore the question. Examples from the computer industry and three biographical cases of agents working in digital telephone switching, computers and military technology reveal the extent to which the espionage was integrated into the science system—the ultimate success of scientific-technical espionage.     

Does Strategic Planning Improve Organizational Performance? A Meta‐Analysis

Strategic planning is a widely adopted management approach in contemporary organizations. Underlying its popularity is the assumption that it is a successful practice in public and private organizations that has positive consequences for organizational performance. Nonetheless, strategic planning has been criticized for being overly rational and for inhibiting strategic thinking. This article undertakes a meta‐analysis of 87 correlations from 31 empirical studies and asks, Does strategic planning improve organizational performance? A random‐effects meta‐analysis reveals that strategic planning has a positive, moderate, and significant impact on organizational performance. Meta‐regression analysis suggests that the positive impact of strategic planning on organizational performance is strongest when performance is measured as effectiveness and when strategic planning is measured as formal strategic planning. This impact holds across sectors (private and public) and countries (U.S. and non‐U.S. contexts). Implications for public administration theory, research, and practice are discussed in the conclusion.     

Does Affirmative Action Worsen Bureaucratic Performance? Evidence from the Indian Administrative Service

Although many countries recruit bureaucrats using affirmative action, the effect of affirmative action recruits on bureaucratic performance has rarely been examined. Some worry that affirmative action worsens bureaucratic performance by diminishing the quality of recruits, whereas others posit that it improves performance by making recruits more representative of and responsive to the population. We test for these possibilities using unusually detailed data on the recruitment, background, and careers of India's elite bureaucracy. We examine the effect of affirmative action hires on district‐level implementation of MGNREGA, the world's largest anti‐poverty program. The data suggest that disadvantaged group members recruited via affirmative action perform no worse than others.     

Reexamining Causes and Consequences: Does Administrative Intensity Matter for Organizational Performance?

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between organizational structure (size and complexity) and administrative intensity and, subsequently, the effect of administrative intensity on organizational performance in the context of four-year institutions of higher education in the United States between 2003 and 2009. Organizational size has a negative effect on administrative intensity and supports the notion of economies of scale. Size and complexity also interact such that complexity has a greater effect on total administrative intensity in larger organizations. While administrative intensity has a nonlinear relationship with degree productivity, suggesting a tipping point of 30% total administration, it has little direct effect on graduation rates.     

Does the @realDonaldTrump Really Matter to Financial Markets?

Does the @realDonaldTrump really matter to financial markets? Research shows that new information about the likely future policy direction of government affects financial markets. In contrast, we argue that new information can also arise about the likely future government's resolve in following through with its policy goals, affecting financial markets as well. We test our argument using data on U.S. President Donald J. Trump's Mexico-related policy tweets and the U.S. dollar/Mexican peso exchange rate. We find that Trump's Mexico-related tweets raised Mexican peso volatility while his policy views were unknown as well as thereafter, as they signaled his resolve in carrying out his Mexico-related agenda. By helping politicians disseminate policy information to voters, and since voters hold governments accountable for their policy performance, social media allows investors to gather information about the likely policy direction and policy resolve of government, especially those of newcomers whose direction and resolve are unknown.