DETERMINANTS OF NETWORK OUTCOMES: THE IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

The literature on network management is extensive. However, it generally explores network structures, neglecting the impact of management strategies. In this article we assess the effect of management strategies on network outcomes, providing empirical evidence from 119 urban revitalization networks. We go beyond current work by testing a path model for the determinants of network outcomes and considering the interactions between the constructs: management strategies, trust, complexity, and facilitative leadership. Our results suggest that management strategies have a strong effect on network outcomes and that they enhance the level of trust. We also found that facilitative leadership has a positive impact on network management as well as on trust in the network. Our findings also show that complexity has a negative impact on trust. A key finding of our research is that managers may wield more influence on network dynamics than previously theorized.     

MANAGING PUBLIC CONSULTATION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL FINDINGS FROM BELGIAN CASE STUDIES

This article addresses the question of how governments can set up and manage, in an increasingly complex policy environment, processes of public consultation that lead to good outcomes. Drawing upon insights of democratic theory and literature on network and interactive governance, the article discusses the organization and outcomes of public consultation processes. The analysis of four Belgian cases shows that the absence of open process rules does not prevent good outcomes. Second, the level of managerial autonomy is positively correlated with the intensity of process design and management. Third, cases with intensive process design and management have better overall results. These findings question some normative assumptions in the literature, positing the need for open process rules regarding entrance, scope of discussion, and interaction. Intensive process design and management with rules properly accommodating the policy situation is possibly a better means of achieving good results than rule openness. These findings challenge the need for legislation stipulating in detail who needs to be consulted, about what, and how.     

The effectiveness of network administrative organizations in governing interjurisdictional natural resources

Can network administrative organizations (NAOs) improve networks' ability to solve complex social and environmental problems? This is a classical question in collaborative governance. The public management literature examines collaborative outcomes at either the organization or the entire network level, but has not addressed “edge level” outcomes to evaluate structured interactions among network actors. Therefore, we investigate outcomes in an interjurisdictional area that reflect collaborative efforts between local governments. Recently, Guangdong Province in China enacted the River Chief System, an institutional reform that mandates the provincial government to establish an NAO to coordinate intercity rivers' management. To assess how well the reform has worked to reduce pollution, we employ the synthetic control method using monthly water quality data from 14 river monitoring sites in two neighboring cities. Our results indicate that the reform reduced the interjurisdictional river sites' pollution level effectively by 36% in the following year. This preliminary finding contributes to the collaborative governance theory and provides new evidence on whether the NAO model improves the shared outcomes between local governments.     

Linking Policy Networks and Environmental Policies: Nitrate Policy Making in Denmark and Sweden 1970-1995

The policy network literature has provided important insight into the way in which public policy is made in Western societies. Most network studies have focused on processes within networks and have paid little attention to the conceptualization of policy outcomes and the theoretical link between network type and policy type. This article defines and categorizes environmental policy and suggests a proposition on the link between network types and environmental policy types. It is argued that the existence of tight and closed policy communities in sectors subject to environmental regulation is associated with the introduction of low cost environmental policies. In contrast, open and loose issue networks are associated with high cost environmental policies.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM IN THE UK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions – health care, housing, and social services – significant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.     

Types of coproduction and differential effects on organizational performance: Evidence from the New York City school system

A growing body of literature explores the process of coproduction by citizens and government employees in providing goods and services, yet research that attempts to link coproduction to organizational performance offers contradictory findings. It is possible that these conflicting results are a consequence of trying to compare distinct categories of coproduction. This study identifies types of coproduction, classified by which organizational tasks citizens can influence during stages of policy design and implementation, and tests whether these types have different effects on student proficiency in Mathematics and English Language Arts using data from New York City schools between 2007 and 2009. This study then tests the degree to which different types of coproduction moderate the negative effect of environmental turbulence on performance. Results confirm that types of coproduction have varying effects on organizational performance and can reduce, and even eliminate, the negative effect of a turbulent environment on student outcomes.     

Network Formation During Disasters: Exploring Micro-Level Interorganizational Processes and the Role of National Capacity

Despite common assumptions about the processes associated with interorganizational network formation, the resulting structures and relevant factors often vary. This variation suggests that there are likely contextual or meta-network variables that moderate the influence of well-established micro-level mechanisms. Because much of the existing research on disaster response networks relies on single case studies, the role of meta-network variables in shaping network formation remains unexplored. We look to fill this gap by comparing network formation patterns in multiple countries that vary in their disaster management capacity. This article uses social network analysis to analyze the formation of response networks after earthquakes in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan. This study contributes to existing literature by examining how transitivity, homophily, and brokerage vary in their salience under different macro-level constraints. The results suggest that national response capacity may influence the jurisdictional level at which bridging and bonding strategies take place.     

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.     

Full and Open Competition in Public Procurement: Values and Ethics in Contracting Opportunity

ABSTRACT

Governments have sought to respond to increasing pressures to accomplish aims with efficiency and at low cost. A perception of the potential for corruption and waste of public resources has been met with calls for transparency and accountability. Competition is believed to lead to impartial, optimal outcomes, but attention paid to competition in the literature suggests that the benefits are not universally clear. This paper considers ‘full and open competition’ as a policy promise, ethical obligation, and a matter of justice, drawing upon work of John Rawls and others, in the United States case. The research question is: What do Federal procurement data tell us about the nature of full and open competition in practice? This study draws upon contract data available from the U.S. Federal government, for fiscal years from 2015 to 2018. Through an ordinal regression, it is suggested that variation in the extent of competition results in part from size of project, size of the business (or potential business) receiving the project, and the industry classification, particularly in cases centering on commercial acquisitions. While ‘full and open competition’ is frequently employed, the difference between the normative value of the concept in statute, and practical outcomes in implementation, is clear. This difference has consequences for both vendors and the government.     

The Integration of Best Environmental Management Practices in Corporate Strategy: Empirical Evidence From Italian Local Governments

Local governments represent an important moving force in promoting sustainable development policies as they make up the level of governance closest to the citizens. The aim of this article is to examine whether Italian local governments exercise de facto their vital role in fostering sustainable development policies. In particular, we analyzed municipality behavior about adopting “green management strategies.” We investigated the main factors identified in management literature which might boost the adoption of these strategies. Several implications ensue from our findings. In particular, the research provides information to improve local government attitudes toward the sustainable development challenge.     

Gender,Child Maltreatment,and Delinquency

Prior research and theorizing have suggested that the relationship between child maltreatment and delinquent outcomes is gendered. However, research to date that has sought to test this hypothesis has been incomplete due to issues such as inconsistency in findings, focusing on a single type of maltreatment or delinquent outcome within a given study, and an overreliance on nonprobability samples. The authors sought to expand on this literature by examining the effects of several different types of child maltreatment on six different delinquent behaviors during middle adolescence in a nationally representative probability sample of American adolescents. Results suggest that in the case of physical abuse and alcohol use, child maltreatment shapes delinquent behaviors differently for girls and boys, with several other types of delinquent behaviors being similarly shaped by child maltreatment among girls and boys. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Gender and Corruption in Business

Are firms with female owners or managers less corrupt than other firms? We test this question using firm-level data on corruption, ownership, and management. We find that women in positions of influence are associated with less corruption: female owners are associated with a lower incidence of bribery and report smaller levels of bribery. Moreover, corruption is seen as less of an obstacle in companies where women are represented in top management. By providing evidence that women are associated with lower levels of corruption in business our research contributes to the literature on development, gender equality, and corruption.     

Multiple principals,multiple problems: Implications for effective governance and a research agenda for joint service delivery

The multiple principal problem refers to multiple collective action problems that organizations face when they must balance (competing) interests of multiple stakeholders under joint service delivery. It negatively affects different types of organization, yet we know little about how organizations (can) mitigate it. We expand a framework based on principal–agent theory, review the literature, and consider implications for effective governance of joint service delivery in the public sector. We observe that joint service delivery can lead to free‐riding and duplication in monitoring, lobbying by principals, and increased autonomy for agents, leading to inefficiency. We build a research agenda and tentatively suggest, based on the literature, that an interface approach, where an elected unitary actor is placed in a middle tier between politics and service delivery, might best mitigate the multiple principal problem, which is currently not dealt with effectively in public management.     

Network structures and network effects across management and policy contexts: A systematic review

The wide application of networks in public administration has been driven by the practical need to address increasingly complex management and policy problems. To understand the outcomes of network structures, we reviewed empirical network research and examined the effects of six network structural properties across the five most studied policy domains. We found that certain structural properties such as global connectedness were consistently associated with positive network effects. Other structures such as brokerage/structural holes provided mixed findings, depending on the policy domain. Overall, our field is still in the early stages of developing research on network effects. The number of hypotheses on both node-level and system-level effects in any policy domain was relatively small. Most studies focused only on a single network at a single point in time, and thus very little work currently exists that examines the influence of contextual factors and their combined effects with network structures.     

Inside the Matrix: Integrating the Paradigms of Intergovernmental and Network Management

Abstract

The basic research concepts of intergovernmental and network management are examined with regard to blending the two into a unified theory of collaborative management. A substantial literature in both fields has emerged and is ripe for conceptually enhancing interorganizational management in the public sector. The collaborative management concepts forwarded emanate from the authors' comprehensive study of collaborative public management in 237 cities. The major concerns that are found to be ready for knowledge unification include: (1) multiple network complexity and the emergence of governance through policy networks, (2) strategic behavior and its implementation through networks, (3) the role of government institutions in network governance, and (4) the use of myriad policy instruments and multiorganizational activity. Each of these research arenas are representative of the kind of knowledge base that can be blended and extended to help public managers understand how to operate in the vertical/horizontal matrix of intergovernmental network management.     

Exploring the Relationship between Operational and Financial Indicators: The Case of Water and Sewer Utilities

ABSTRACT

There is debate in the literature on whether or not general management principles are applicable to the study and practice of public administration. This research responds by exploring how local officials manage the performance of public services with private good characteristics, where general management principles could be embraced for service delivery. The relationship between operational and financial indicators is explored within the functional areas of water and sewer, with the hypothesis that operational outcomes impact financial outcomes similar to private enterprises. Because the findings do not support this hypothesis, the authors conclude that general management principles may not be applicable to all forms of administration given that public cannot be removed from the management of public services even with private good characteristics.     

Strategic Information System Plans in Nations Around the World

Strategic information systems planning (SISP) literature addresses the importance of measuring both broad externally validated societal measures of organizational outcomes, while at the same time assessing organization specific metrics that speak to an institution’s ability to deliver specific outputs. Accordingly, this article explores literature for strategic management in the public sector, SISP, and digital government and applies a strategic planning framework along with analyzing national SISP plans for information technology or electronic government. The research finds that countries are developing both strategic and operational goals that have managerial and governance implications.     

COMBINING HIERARCHICAL AND NETWORK STRATEGIES: SUCCESSFUL CHANGES IN DUTCH SOCIAL HOUSING

In the current times of economic turmoil, many sectors are thought to be in need of structural reform or system overhauls, which call for political leadership, decisiveness and vision. These kinds of challenges present governments with a dilemma. On the one hand, there is a call for radical change while, on the other hand, the options available for such radical change are limited by the many interdependencies of a network society. In this article, we analyse three fundamental and structural reforms in Dutch housing. These reforms were all implemented in a world of interdependencies. The strategies applied appear to be a mixture of unilateral, hierarchical strategies and multilateral, network strategies. These hybrid strategies come in three forms: (1) a combination of hierarchical and network strategies; (2) variations/alternations over time between network strategies and hierarchical strategies; and (3) the use of one strategy in the frontstage while the other strategy is being used backstage. Greater understanding of these types of hybrids can help governments in dealing with the tension between interdependencies and the need for change.     

Why voluntary municipal merger projects fail: evidence from popular votes in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

What determines the failure of local government amalgamation referenda? Existing research suggests that functional pressures act as a push factor towards local territorial reform, whereas considerations of political self-determination exert a pull effect. However, we know little about the respective importance of these countervailing forces. In this paper, I analyze popular vote decisions on mergers of 541 municipalities involved in 166 different merger projects in three Swiss cantons since the new millennium. The results show that both functional pressures and concerns for self-determination are linked to popular vote outcomes: small municipalities are less likely to reject a merger. Concerns for self-determination matter, but only when the pressures of smallness are not overwhelming: a higher vote share of right-wing parties and a preponderance of other municipalities in the merger coalition increase the probability that voters reject a merger project. This has implications for policy-makers’ strategies when drafting and promoting voluntary local amalgamation reforms.