Capacity,Leadership, and Organizational Performance: Testing the Black Box Model of Public Management

According to recent “black box” models of public management, managerial capacity is a critical component for achieving service delivery improvement. In particular, black box models assume that the impact of management systems is maximized through integration with effective leadership. This assumption is tested by analyzing the effects of managerial capacity and organizational leadership on the performance of English local governments, while controlling for a range of other variables, including organizational size, resources, external constraints, and past performance. Empirical results show that capacity possesses a positive statistical association with local government performance and that leadership can enhance the impact of effective management systems.     

The Right Mix? Gender Diversity in Top Management Teams and Financial Performance

Recent research has illustrated that demographic diversity influences the outcomes of public sector organizations. Most studies have focused on workforce diversity; by comparison, little is known about how managerial diversity affects organizational outcomes. This article focuses on gender diversity in the top management teams of public organizations and its relationship to financial performance. Theory suggests that management diversity can be a positive asset for organizations, allowing for the use of more diverse knowledge and human skill sets. Results of this study, however, suggest that organizations may only be able to leverage these advantages if they have a supporting management structure. In a longitudinal study of top management teams in Danish municipalities, the authors find that gender diversity in top management teams is associated with higher financial performance, but only in municipalities with a management structure that supports cross‐functional team work. These results are interpreted in light of existing theory, and implications are suggested.     

Managing Diversity in U.S. Federal Agencies: Effects of Diversity and Diversity Management on Employee Perceptions of Organizational Performance

Diversity in the workplace is a central issue for contemporary organizational management. Concomitantly, managing increased diversity deserves greater concern in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. The authors address the effects of diversity and diversity management on employee perceptions of organizational performance in U.S. federal agencies by developing measures of three variables: diversity, diversity management, and perceived organizational performance. Drawing from the Central Personnel Data File and the 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey, their findings suggest that racial diversity relates negatively to organizational performance. When moderated by diversity management policies and practices and team processes, however, racial diversity correlates positively with organizational performance. Gender and age diversity and their interactions with contextual variables produce mixed results, suggesting that gender and age diversity reflect more complicated relationships. This article provides evidence for several benefits derived from effectively managing diversity.     

Racial Diversity and Judicial Influence on Appellate Courts

This article evaluates the substantive consequences of judicial diversity on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Due to the small percentage of racial minorities on the federal bench, the key question in evaluating these consequences is not whether minority judges vote differently from nonminority judges, but whether their presence on appellate courts influences their colleagues and affects case outcomes. Using matching methods, I show that black judges are significantly more likely than nonblack judges to support affirmative action programs. This individual‐level difference translates into a substantial causal effect of adding a black judge to an otherwise all‐nonblack panel. Randomly assigning a black counterjudge—a black judge sitting with two nonblack judges—to a three‐judge panel of the Courts of Appeals nearly ensures that the panel will vote in favor of an affirmative action program. These results have important implications for assessing the relationship between diversity and representation on federal courts.     

Management Activity and Program Performance: Gender as Management Capital

Do men and women manage differently? Do their efforts have different impacts on public program performance? Building from a formal treatment of public management and performance, this study investigates how the interaction of gender and management strategies influences organizational performance. Focusing on several hundred public organizations and their top managers over a three‐year period, the analysis maps the gender question onto Mark Moore's distinction among managing upward toward political principals, downward toward organizational agents, and outward toward the networked environment. Findings indicate that women and men as top managers have different performance impacts, and these impacts vary by managerial function as well.     

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.     

Residential mortgage foreclosure and neighborhood change

Abstract

We use New Orleans as a case study to explore residential mortgage foreclosure as one mechanism linking prior black population and changes in employment levels with changes in aggregate income, housing tenure, vacancy rates, and black population size. Mortgage foreclosure data are merged with 1980 and 1990 census data aggregated at the block group level.

Structural equation modeling results indicate that both economic change and prior racial composition are associated with reductions in median block group incomes. Racial transition and loss of employment and income also increased foreclosure rates. Economic change and prior racial composition together impact neighborhoods through their effects on income and foreclosure rates, which in turn differentially affect vacancy rates, the change in black population, and the housing tenure status of residents. The differential effects of these variables point to the persistence of a dual housing market for blacks and whites in New Orleans.     

Gentrification and Fair Housing: Does Gentrification Further Integration?

ABSTRACT

On the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, long-time residents of cities across the country feel increasingly anxious that they will be priced out of their homes and communities, as growing numbers of higher-income, college-educated households opt for downtown neighborhoods. These fears are particularly acute among black and Latino residents. Yet when looking through the lens of fair housing, gentrification also offers a potential opportunity, as the moves that higher-income, white households make into predominantly minority, lower-income neighborhoods are moves that help to integrate those neighborhoods, at least in the near term. We explore the long-term trajectory of predominantly minority, low-income neighborhoods that gentrified over the 1980s and 1990s. On average, these neighborhoods experienced little racial change while they gentrified, but a significant minority became racially integrated during the decade of gentrification, and over the longer term, many of these neighborhoods remained racially stable. That said, some gentrifying neighborhoods that were predominantly minority in 1980 appeared to be on the path to becoming predominantly white. Policies, such as investments in place-based, subsidized housing, are needed in many gentrifying neighborhoods to ensure racial and economic diversity over the longer term.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Reexamining Racial Attitudes: The Conditional Relationship Between Diversity and Socioeconomic Environment

Social science research notes that racial context is related to attitudes toward social issues; however, surprisingly little research has examined how the impact of racial context on attitudes is activated. The aim of this article is to examine racial context "effects" for policy preferences, but to do so within a broader perspective. This article extends the literature on racial attitudes by considering a conditional relationship between racial and ethnic context and socioeconomic context and expanding racial context to include multiple racial and ethnic groups. The findings indicate that racial and ethnic contextual effects do emerge; however, these effects are conditional on the socioeconomic context in which an individual resides. Specifically, high socioeconomic contexts and highly diverse contexts are related to higher levels of support for racial social issues; however, contexts characterized by low socioeconomic context and high racial and ethnic diversity are associated with lower levels of support for such issues .     

Government Communication Effectiveness and Satisfaction with Police Performance: A Large‐Scale Survey Study

For the last two decades, performance management theories and practices have focused on outcome‐oriented management but have paid little attention to the role of public communication. Using multiple large data sets from Kansas City, Missouri, for 2009–14, this research suggests that the perceived effectiveness of public communication has a more substantial impact on public satisfaction with police protection and crime prevention than neighborhood crime rates and broken windows factors and that perceived effectiveness moderates the negative impact of crime rates. After controlling for residents’ demographic characteristics, the authors find that the perceived effectiveness of communication is associated with public satisfaction with the content and quality of the city website and the government television channel. The implications for public safety management and police–citizen relations as well as directions for future research on public communication strategies and public performance management are presented.     

The salience of racial identity among African-American and white students

This study examines the salience of racial identity among white and black students at four American universities. Utilizing the Twenty Statements Test [Kuhn, M. H., & McPartland, T. S. (1954). An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. American Sociological Review, 19, 68–76], we measure racial identity salience among students at three predominantly white northeastern universities and one historically black southern university. As predicted, we found that racial identity salience for white students at the predominantly white universities (PWUs) was significantly lower than racial identity salience among black students in these university settings. Contrary to our expectations, racial identity salience among white students at the historically black university (HBCU) was lower than racial identity salience exhibited among black students at this university, and white students at the HBCU were not more likely to exhibit racial identity saliency than white students at the PWUs. These findings indicate that the “transparency phenomenon,” transcends context in that whites are generally far less likely to think of themselves in racial terms than are people of color. Thus, racial transparency among whites appears to supercede context. Racial salience is much higher among African-American students at the PWUs than at the HBCU; this finding suggests the importance of context for African-Americans. However, fully one-third of African-American students at the HBCU listed race on the TST, suggesting the transcendent power of a racialized identity in a dominantly white society.     

When Do Welfare Attitudes Become Racialized? The Paradoxical Effects of Education

Recent research suggests that welfare attitudes may be shaped by negative perceptions of blacks, suggesting an implicit racialization of the policy. But what might inhibit the racialization of welfare? In this vein, research indicating that education facilitates tolerance suggests that negative racial perceptions and welfare attitudes may be less related among the educated. However, education may also be associated with a greater ability to connect general predispositions with specific policy attitudes. Somewhat paradoxically, this suggests that the association between racial perceptions and welfare attitudes may be stronger among the college‐educated, despite their lower overall levels of racial hostility. Study 1 shows that education attenuates negative racial perceptions, while strengthening their impact on public‐assistance attitudes—but only when assistance is described as “welfare.” Study 2 extends and qualifies this finding, showing that education strengthens the relationship between perceptions of welfare recipients and global welfare attitudes only when recipients are black.     

Racial and gender income inequality in the American states

The purpose of this article is to uncover the political factors associated with greater income parity for black men, black women, and white women relative to white men in the American states. Variables are constructed for federal, state, and local government employment, state electoral competition, federal procurement, black state legislators, and women state legislators along with a number of socioeconomic factors. It is discovered that the political variables carry less weight than the socioeconomic ones. These findings raise questions about the future prospects for increased earnings parity for minorities and women as previous federal efforts to eliminate racial and gender discrimination appear to have been weakened and state political factors have little relationship with greater income equality.     

Taking a Closer Look at the Empowerment‐Performance Relationship: Evidence from Law Enforcement Organizations

This article examines the influence of empowering leadership practices on police officers' job performance, perceptions of managerial effectiveness, and unit performance. These relationships are examined using multisource survey data collected from 100 law enforcement managers, 446 of their subordinates, and 98 of their direct supervisors. The analysis shows that empowering leadership contributes positively to subordinate officers' job performance and unit effectiveness. Empowering leadership is also positively associated with subordinate but not with supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Task‐oriented leadership, however, is positively associated with both subordinate and supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Implications of these results for managerial leadership in law enforcement organizations are discussed.     

制度能力与治理绩效——以上海社区为例

本文考察了社区治理绩效的影响因素.通过对上海45个小区调查数据的统计分析,文章发现居委会的制度能力与社区治理绩效之间存在显著的关系.居委会动员社区外资源的能力有助于提高其服务效率、居委会直选投票率,居委会与物业之间的合作关系也有助于提高直选投票率.该研究发现意味着,随着住房市场化和封闭式小区的出现,传统的基于楼组长动员网络的社区治理技术面临挑战,居委会有必要采取新的社区治理实践和技术来强化其制度能力的建设,从而更好地服务、管理社区.本文将制度能力作为一种分析工具引入城市社区治理的研究,丰富了社区治理研究的理论视角.同时,本文认为今后的研究需要进一步完善居委会制度能力的测量指标,并进一步阐明制度能力影响治理绩效的作用机制.     

Agricultural extension in transition worldwide: structural,financial and managerial strategies for improving agricultural extension

Agricultural extension is in transition worldwide. Governments and international agencies are advancing structural, financial and managerial strategies to reform extension. This article reviews and analyses these reform measures, concluding with a conceptual framework that is intended to underscore at once the diversity and interconnectedness of these structural, financial and managerial strategies for decentralizing public sector agricultural extension.     

Seeing Difference: The Effect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes toward Latinos

Rapid growth in the size of the Latino population has increased the ethnic diversity of urban neighborhoods, transforming the residential experiences of many black Americans. The competition for scarce resources is considered a central force in black-Latino relations and a source of anti-Latino sentiment among blacks. This article examines how the level and the distribution of economic resources within diverse areas affect black attitudes toward Latinos. Drawing on a multilevel dataset of individual racial attitudes and neighborhood characteristics, the analysis reveals that the relative economic status of racial groups is an important influence on black attitudes. In environments where Latinos are economically advantaged relative to their black neighbors, blacks are more likely to harbor negative stereotypes about Latinos, to be reluctant to extend to Latinos the same policy benefits they themselves enjoy, and to view black and Latino economic and political interests as incompatible. While the results suggest that diversity without conflict is possible, they make clear that the prospects for intergroup comity depend on some resolution of blacks' economic insecurities.     

Racial Composition, White Racial Attitudes, and Black Representation: Testing the Racial Threat Hypothesis in the United States Senate

We make the case for why the racial threat hypothesis should characterize the relationship between states?? racial composition, whites?? racial attitudes, and black representation in the United States Senate. Consistent with this claim, we find that senators from states with larger percentages of African-Americans among the electorate and more racially conservative preferences among whites provide worse representation of black interests in the Senate than their counterparts. We also apply theories of congressional cross-pressures in considering how senator partisanship and region moderate the effect of white racial attitudes on black representation. Finally, consistent with the racial threat hypothesis, we show that the negative effect of white racial attitudes on the quality of black representation is stronger when state unemployment rates are higher.     

Regulating Public Services: How Public Managers Respond to External Performance Assessment

Performance management systems have become a key component of contemporary public administration. However, there has been only limited analysis of the social construction of performance by public managers who are subject to them. This article examines the ways in which public managers create, maintain, and disrupt performance management practices. The authors find that managers make external performance assessments perform for themselves by constantly negotiating boundaries in ways that combine bureaucratic and managerial rationales. The authors argue that the ways in which organizational boundaries are constructed are fundamental to understanding the success or failure of performance management systems and the transformation of managerial ways of thinking about performance into a logic of improvement through which contemporary public sector reforms become embedded.