Top Management Turnover and Organizational Performance: A Test of a Contingency Model

A crucial test of whether “management matters” is whether changes in the team at the top of an organization make a difference. Focusing on turnover in the collective senior team rather than successions of individual chief executives, this article argues that the impact of leadership succession is contingent upon prior organizational performance. The evidence on English local government shows that changes in the top management team lead to improvements when initial performance is bad, but result in deterioration when initial performance is good. The results support the view that high‐performing organizations should attempt to retain members of their senior management team, whereas low performers should seek to replace them.     

Turnover among City Managers: The Role of Political and Economic Change

Executive turnover can have profound effects on city policies, programs, and commitments such as contracting or issuing debt. This article identifies how political changes, reflected in the composition of the city council, and economic changes in the community influence city manager turnover. Analysis of manager turnover patterns in 143 large U.S. cities with council-manager governments from 1987 to 1999 allows us to distinguish "push" and "pull" factors that can induce city managers to leave their jobs. The empirical analysis demonstrates that political conflict and economic development can influence the likelihood that a city manager will exit a community, but these effects can be complex. In particular, the influence of community economic development on turnover includes a temporal dimension not revealed in previous research. We conclude by discussing the findings' implications for career patterns in city management.     

The Importance of Role Clarification in Workgroups: Effects on Perceived Role Clarity,Work Satisfaction,and Turnover Rates

This article examines how greater role clarification may be associated with increased work satisfaction and decreased turnover rates in workgroups. These linkages are examined with the use of multivariate analysis of variance and hierarchical regression analysis for data collected during two time periods from multiple sources: personnel records and an organizational survey of 1,699 employees working in 45 geographically distributed offices in a state government agency. Results indicate that offices with a high level of role clarification had significantly higher levels of work satisfaction and lower rates of turnover. Additionally, the effects of role clarification on work satisfaction and turnover behavior were mediated by overall role clarity perceived in these offices. The implications of these findings for effective management of workgroups in government agencies are discussed.     

党的执政理念与政府管理创新

政府管理创新与党的执政理念密切相关。政府管理创新既是形势发展的客观需要 ,也是贯彻好党的执政理念的必然要求。立党为公、执政为民 ,以人民为本、全心全意为人民服务 ,党的这一执政理念决定了我国政府管理创新的方向必然是建立一个民主与法治的政府、责任与服务的政府、公正与廉洁的政府、透明与诚信的政府、精干与高效的政府     

Tools for Governing: Privatization, Public-Private Partnerships, and Entrepreneurial Management

Books reviewed:
E.S. Savas, Privatization and Public-Private Partnerships
Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau, ed., Public-Private Policy Partnerships
Van R. Johnston, ed., Entrepreneurial Management and Public Policy
Paul J. Andrisani, Simon Hakim, and Eva Leeds, eds., Making Government Work: Lessons from America's Governors and Mayors     

The Path for Top Management Teams to Achieve High-Performing Council Organisations

This article examines what management practices top management teams should pursue to achieve high-performing council organisations. It reports on the findings of a study into the practices of top management teams at three high-performing and three low-performing Melbourne councils. The study makes two important findings. First, there is no one path for top management teams to achieve a high-performance council. Second, the capacity of top management teams to work effectively with the elected members is the only factor that distinguishes high-performing from low-performing councils. The only features all high-performing and all low-performing councils do well in are financial monitoring and nurturing teamwork within business/operating units. But these are insufficient by themselves to provide success, and may simply be regarded as the basics of management practice.     

Governing Interlocal Cooperation: City Council Interests and the Implications for Public Management

Local government managers are described as key participants in the development of interlocal cooperation, but the interests of city councils in this process have gone largely unstudied. Here, the author addresses the theoretical importance of council-manager relations in interlocal public service cooperation. Three propositions identify areas of shared council-manager responsibility. Evidence from in-depth interviews with city council members is used to assess each proposition. While interlocal partnership has been described as a managerial activity, council members take an interest in network development and agreement assessment. Managers, on the other hand, give greater attention to public participation and education. The evidence refines assumptions about council-manager roles in the formation of cooperative agreements, with important implications for local government management.     

执政体制:概念、结构和特征

构建科学的执政体制,是党的执政能力建设的重要内容,是实现科学执政的基础条件。党的执政体制就是党在执政过程中政党、国家和社会政治团体之间政治权力的配置、设置及其形成的规章制度和行为规范的总和。党的执政体制结构指党与其他政治主体之间所形成的政治关系体系,包括党与国家政权的关系、党与民主党派的关系、党与人民群众的关系等。党的执政体制具有阶级性、整体性、动态性的特征。     

Conflict and Collaboration in Wildfire Management: The Role of Mission Alignment

Responding to large wildfires requires actors from multiple jurisdictions and multiple levels of government to work collaboratively. The missions and objectives of federal agencies often differ from those of state land management agencies as well as local wildfire response agencies regarding land use and wildfire management. As wildfire size and intensity increase over time and associated annual suppression costs range between $2 billion and $3 billion, learning more about the existence and management of perceived agency differences becomes imperative within the academic and practitioner communities. This article examines the extent to which perceived mission misalignment exists among federal, state, and local actors and how well those differences are managed. Findings provide quantitative evidence that mission misalignment is greater within intergovernmental relationships than within intragovernmental relationships. Additionally, findings speak to the larger conversation around intergovernmental relationships within the federal structure and perceptions of the presence and management of potential interagency conflict.

Practitioner Points

• Potential conflict between the missions of federal and state land agencies presents a challenge for disaster management, and differing governmental levels and land‐use mandates may highlight relationships where tensions are likely greater.
• Wildfire managers may need to more proactively address relationships among federal agencies and state and local partners rather than relationships among multiple federal agencies.
• Wildfire management may benefit from increased awareness of—and discussion around—partner agencies’ stated land management philosophies and legal mandates, as structural frameworks, such as the Incident Command Structure, may not alone lead to conflict‐free collaboration.

     

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board: A View of Its Role One Year Later

The secretary of the Treasury, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the comptroller general established the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) at the end of 1990. The Board recommends accounting principles for the United States government, including those to implement the Chief Financial Officers Act. This article reviews some results of research conducted by the Board during the past year and presents a conceptual framework for understanding the role of the Board and how it differs from the roles of FASB and GASB.     

Remembering while Forgetting: The Role of Automorphism in City Management in Warsaw

This article summarizes the results of a study of city management in Warsaw. Contrary to the common opinion, the difficulties in effective city management in Warsaw do not stem from its communist past, but from a veneered sedimentation of a rationalist-legalist frame of action. These problems are aggravated by a negative attitude toward imitation of foreign models. The article discusses possibilities for reframing that are created by automorphism, that is, an imitation of the city's invented tradition.     

非理性因素在管理决策中的积极作用

决策是管理活动中的核心环节,决策者在管理活动中经常面对复杂的信息和环境以及不确定性等状况,不能够简单地使用以前的准则和程序来解决这类问题,应该发挥需要、情感、意志、无意识、灵感、直觉等非理性因素在决策活动中积极的引导作用、创造作用和协调作用。     

Governing Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction: The Case of Pennsylvania

Over the past decade, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing enabled an unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) boom in many regions of the United States, including parts of Pennsylvania. This revolution has created serious concerns about the capability of existing institutions to govern important societal outcomes associated with UOGE. We present a conceptual framework for assessing key societal outcomes influenced by UOGE governance. In applying this framework to Pennsylvania, we discern certain institutional strengths that have allowed the Commonwealth to reap appreciable short‐term economic growth from rich resource endowments. We also find, however, that several institutional weaknesses have allowed costs externalized to the environment, public health, and community integrity to offset some proportion of those economic benefits. Likewise, we find that governance of UOGE in Pennsylvania has contributed to a bifurcated sociopolitical landscape wherein adversarial coalitions dispute the legitimacy of the industry and its governance.     

Rehearsing Citizenship: The Governing of Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Malaya

This article traces the sudden problematisation and governing of juvenile delinquency in British colonial Malaya in the decade preceding independence in 1957 whereby a juvenile court system, a network of institutions for delinquents, and a series of training and disciplinary practices were set up to rehabilitate the delinquent in order to turn him into a responsible citizen. Drawing on the analytics of disciplinary and ethical practices conducted by Michel Foucault, it is argued that the governing of juvenile delinquency in colonial Malaya may be seen as a fundamental element of a wider assemblage of normalising techniques seeking to recast subjectivity from that of immature individuals into active and responsible self-governing ones, and that these techniques were highly dividing in that they produced not only what is taken to be good citizens but also delinquents. It is shown that Malaysian independence, far from leading to a break with these power-laden practices of citizenship, instead leads to their further development, dispersal and institutionalisation.     

Governing a consensus democracy: The interplay of Pillarisation and administration

Apart from a static structure of institutional blocks erected for a certain purpose, pillarisation might also be viewed as a dynamic process accommodating not only different cultural groupings, but also varying regional, local and historical circumstances. Apart from being a sociological, political and cultural structure, pillarisation for a long time fulfilled important public administrative and executive functions within and for Dutch society. Apart from being a top‐down vehicle for separation and social control, pillarisation can also be seen as a polycentric or ‘bottom‐up’ institutional structure in which a variety of executive agencies, quangos, and other functional professional, local and regional institutions are being co‐ordinated, integrated, guided and controlled. By seeing ‘pillarisation’ as a dynamic form of network management, the question arises how ‘depillarisation’ affects the development system of intergovernmental governance in the Netherlands. More, rather than less historical knowledge of pillarisation is needed, not for understanding historical questions, but for grasping the complexities of contemporary institutional developments.     

Public Financial Management Reforms: The Role of Ipsas in Latin‐America

During the last 30 years, many public administration reforms promoted by New Public Management have been undertaken. These reforms have spread to Latin‐American countries and include changes in governmental accounting systems, where the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) has been a stimulus for modernization. This article aims to clarify the situation of IPSASs implementation in the Latin‐American context as well as the stimuli for and effects of their implementation. The analysis shows that there is an emerging international trend to adopt IPSASs in Latin‐American countries although at the same time, there are evident obstacles to achieving reform goals. In Colombia, reforms are still underway, and the usefulness of IPSASs to improve decision‐making at an organisational level cannot be evaluated. Meanwhile, in Peru, the modernization is more rhetorical than real, and many efforts remain to be made for the effective implementation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.