Understanding Cooperative Behavior in Labor Management Cooperation: A Theory-Building Exercise

This article proposes a theory of how mandated institutional cooperation transforms into individual cooperative behavior. Using qualitative strategies, we draw insights about cooperation in three public-sector efforts of labor-management cooperation (LMC). We report an association between critical shifts in the roles of stakeholders and the change from adversarial to cooperative labor relations. While managers became team players along with their employees, labor representatives assumed managerial responsibilities. These changes were also associated with a service-oriented perspective, better understanding of the other's experiences, and a view of cooperation as partnership. At the heart of these transformations, we found critical changes in communication patterns associated with incrementally growing levels of trust. We propose a model that depicts the links between collective and individual levels of organizational action related to LMC. We conclude that the positive shifts in mental models regarding work and the value of cooperation justify the promotion of LMC efforts.     

Environmental dispute resolution and hazardous waste cleanups: A cautionary tale of policy implementation

New York State experimented with replacing their litigation-oriented system for achieving toxic dump site cleanup with one promising to lower transaction costs through alternative dispute resolution. Our analysis of outcomes is informed by three generations of implementation work focusing on (1) the motivations and incentives shaping individual behavior, (2) the larger organizational and political factors associated with variation across cases, and (3) the generic properties of policy implements. This mosaic approach to explanation produces, we believe, a more lifelike picture of use to policy makers for understanding the dynamic and interrelated nature of their choices.     

Organizational structures and the development project planning sequence

Variants of the project planning sequence or cycle are widely employed to provide the conceptual framework for investment in developing countries. However, the current models attempt to generalize activity sequences across a range of projects with differing objectives. They also tend to abstract project planning from its institutional context, and to make little allowance for the possibility that alternative approaches to organizational and managerial problems may be available. The article outlines a technique that facilitates the analysis of active-organization patterns. Commencing with the classical tripartite system, a number of standard forms are identified and described. A series of observations are then offered on the organizational choices and control procedures that are available for public sector projects. The paper concludes with some remarks on the relationship between project planning and strategies for the development of indigenous institutional capacity in developing countries.     

Leaving the Australian Labor Force: An Extended Encounter with the State

This article seeks to demonstrate the way in which labor market choices are shaped by institutional arrangements devised by the state. Since these arrangements differ markedly from country to country, much that is distinctive about national labor market outcomes is a function of diverse encounters with the state. This argument is illustrated by an account that explains why Australia, a country which apparently devotes little in the way of public resources to the old, manifests an exceptionally high level of early retirement. This account shows that, in contrast to the standard European welfare state strategy of public pensions, the Australian state has over many decades tackled the need for provision for the old by encouraging retirement strategies that are not subsidized directly from the public purse. These strategies include the encouragement of widely dispersed home ownership and occupational pensions. Read broadly, the article suggests that the extremity of contrasts frequently made between the advanced welfare states of Western Europe and the miserable social policy outcomes in the democracies of the New World have been far too extreme. The article experiments with novel presentational techniques designed to focus attention on individual choices and on policy outcomes for the individual rather than policy outputs by governments.     

When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization

Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Exploiting variation in the timing of laws across the states and using data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004, we find that the enactment of a mandatory bargaining law significantly boosted subsequent political participation among teachers. We also identify increased contact from organized groups seeking to mobilize teachers as a likely mechanism that explains this finding. These results have important implications for the current debate over collective bargaining rights and for our understanding of policy feedback, political parties and interest groups, and the bureaucracy.     

Does Spending More Get More? Health Care Delivery and Fiscal Implications From a Medicare Fee Bump

While salient features of the Affordable Care Act include insurance expansions and private coverage reforms, various other provisions are embedded within the law. We focus on a temporary 10 percent fee increase for primary care visits supplied to publicly insured (Medicare) beneficiaries. Using administrative and survey data, we assess the price shock's impact on service volume, physician labor supply, and quality of care. Primary care physicians (PCPs) in independent practices demonstrate, at most, a marginal 2 percent increase in new patient visits while horizontally and vertically integrated PCPs show no change. Both PCP organizational types witness declines in established patient visits, on average, but there is marked heterogeneity: established patient visits increase by 1 to 2 percent among PCPs with fewer Medicare claims in the pre‐period. The Medicare fee bump did not observably impact other labor supply outcomes and quality of care margins. We estimate that the policy introduced a $1.5 billion transfer from taxpayers to providers during the initiative's first three years.     

Two spheres of regulation: Balancing social and economic goals

Independent regulatory authorities hold comprehensive policy mandates that cover both economic and social goals. They take on various roles in market regulation, competition policy, consumer protection, and labor inspection. This article questions whether policymakers are driven by different rationales when delegating the realization of social, as opposed to economic goals, and analyzes how regulators accommodate their various roles in practice. The conceptual framework links the literature on delegation and organizational models. Comparative analysis of postal policy in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom covers a serious area of potential conflict between social and economic regulation. Variation in delegation points to the relevance of instrumental considerations, but also to the politics of institutional arrangements. Variation in regulatory practice shows that organizational models make a difference in accommodating conflict. The article makes a strong case that social and economic regulation need to be addressed as two distinct, yet interacting spheres. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd     

Does group engagement with members constitute a “beneficial inefficiency”?

This article explores the role of variations in organizational form in explaining levels of group access. Specifically, we test whether group forms incorporating more extensive engagement with members receive policy advantages. We develop and test a account of beneficial inefficiencies. Our account reasons that the costs of inefficient intraorganizational processes and practices associated with enhanced engagement with members are beneficial as they generate crucial “access goods”—specifically encompassing positions—that in turn receive enhanced policy benefits. The costs of intraorganizational practices allowing members to engage more thoroughly in decision making are thus beneficial inefficiencies. We test this proposition using data on the Australian interest group system. Using the tools of cluster analysis, we identify three forms, each varying in respect of the inefficiencies they embody. Our multivariate analysis finds strong support for the account of beneficial inefficiencies: groups with the most inefficient organizational model receiving the greatest policy access.     

Public Managers' Perceptions of Organizational Goal Ambiguity: Analyzing Alternative Models

Much organizational theory, research, and practice emphasizes the value of organizational members having clear perceptions of the organization's goals. For years, authors have asserted that public organizations have particularly vague goals, goals more vague than those of business firms. Yet, researchers have not devoted a lot of attention to ways of measuring perceptions about organizational goal clarity in public organizations and analyzing these perceptions. Many authors claim that the external political context increases goal ambiguity in public organizations. Some survey evidence, however, suggests that other factors, such as individual dispositions and attitudes, and internal organizational structures and processes, have greater effects. We analyze three alternative models of goal ambiguity—a political model, an organizational model, and an individual model—using data collected in Phase II of the National Administrative Studies Project (NASP-II), and then a composite model. Although political context acts as a significant determinant of goal ambiguity, both organizational and individual models have better explanatory power. Implications of these findings for theory and managerial practice are discussed.     

Policy capacity and rise of data-based policy innovation labs

In scarcely a decade, a “labification” phenomenon has taken hold globally. The search for innovative policy solutions for social problems is embedded within scientific experimental-like structures often referred to as policy innovation labs (PILs). With the rapid technological changes (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence), data-based PILs have emerged. Despite the growing importance of these PILs in the policy process, very little is known about them and how they contribute to policy outcomes. This study analyzes 133 data-based PILs and examines their contribution to policy capacity. We adopt policy capacity framework to investigate how data-based PILs contribute to enhancing analytical, organization, and political policy capacity. Many data-based PILs are located in Western Europe and North America, initiated by governments, and employ multi-domain administrative data with advanced technologies. Our analysis finds that data-based PILs enhance analytical and operational policy capacity at the individual, organizational and systemic levels but do little to enhance political capacity. It is this deficit that we suggest possible strategies for data-based PILs.     

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.     

Immigrants in the Political Process

Immigrants, who comprise a growing group in many European countries, are usually under-represented in the political process. Sweden's immigrant policy, with its far-reaching social and political rights, liberal citizenship laws and respect for cultural differences, is often regarded as an exemplary model of how to integrate immigrants in society. The 1975 electoral reform in Sweden gave immigrants the opportunity to become active in the democratic process by allowing foreign citizens to vote in local political elections. This article examines the political and organizational participation of immigrants. The findings indicate widespread and significant exclusion and under-representation of immigrants in political and organizational life. We argue that immigrant political participation is best understood in terms of a tension between individual characteristics and institutional and organizational factors. In particular, the long-term exclusion of large numbers of immigrants from labor related organizations is shown to be an important obstacle to their further social and political participation.     

Who Lobbies Whom? Special Interest Politics under Alternative Electoral Systems

Why do some interest groups lobby politicians and others lobby bureaucrats? We theorize lobbying venue choices and intensity as a function of contract enforceability with policy makers, politicians, or bureaucrats. We argue that organizational structures of interest groups, in particular, whether they are centralized or decentralized, substantially affect their lobbying strategies because they are associated with different ability to monitor and enforce contracts with policy makers and punish them when they fail. We further demonstrate that the effect of centralized versus decentralized structure on venue choices is conditional on the types of electoral system: majoritarian, semiproportional (single, nontransferable vote: SNTV), or proportional representation systems. We test this argument using longitudinal survey data on lobbying which span two decades and cover around 250 interest groups in various sectors and issue areas in Japan. The results lend strong support to our argument about contract enforceability under alternative electoral systems.     

Survey‐Based Measurement of Public Management and Policy Networks

Networks have become a central concept in the policy and public management literature; however, theoretical development is hindered by a lack of attention to the empirical properties of network measurement methods. This paper compares three survey‐based methods for measuring organizational networks: the roster, the free‐recall name generator, and a hybrid name generator that combines these two classic approaches. Results indicate that the roster and free‐recall name generator methods both suffer from important limitations. The roster method tends to measure many linkages among a limited set of network actors, whereas the name generator tends to measure fewer linkages among a larger set of network actors. Using survey data on policy networks within California regional planning processes (N = 752), we find that the hybrid method strikes an effective balance between these techniques. The hybrid approach performs well in terms of identifying a large number of network actors and interconnections between them. Although no survey‐based measurement technique is perfect, this study suggests that the hybrid name generator is an excellent alternative for the measurement of complex networks with large or shifting boundaries that encompass a diverse set of actors.     

Spatial mismatch,discrimination, and male youth employment in the Washington,DC area: Implications for residential mobility policies

Residential mobility policies are in part premised on the assumption that place and not race explains blacks' joblessness in central cities. The article investigates the potential effects of residential mobility programs by analyzing a “natural” black residential mobility process in the Washington, DC area, where black suburbanization has coincided with suburban job growth. Using data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), this article examines the relative contribution of place and race in explaining racial differences in employment for young men with a high school diploma or less. The results show that having a suburban residential location improves young males' spatial access to jobs, but that the employment benefits are greater for white than comparable black youth. Simulations point to racial discrimination in suburban labor markets being as important as having a suburban residential location as an explanation of white‐black employment rate differences in the Washington, DC area. Thus, if residential mobility programs are to be fully effective in improving central city minorities' employment prospects, antidiscrimination enforcement efforts in suburban labor markets must be included in the policy package.© 1998 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Extending urban services in developing countries: Policy options and organizational choices

Governments in developing countries will face serious problems in extending basic social services, public facilities and infrastructure for their rapidly growing urban populations during the next decade. The steadily increasing concentration of the poor in cities will exacerbate already severe strains on urban services. Innovative solutions will be needed to meet the growing demands for urban services. In addition to expanding national and municipal efforts, governments in developing countries must also explore alternative policies and organizational arrangements for meeting the basic needs of their urban population. Among the potential alternatives are: using market surrogates to improve service delivery; lowering the costs of service provision through changes in regulations and controls on urban development; actively supporting self-help and service upgrading schemes by the poor; promoting public-private co-operation and private sector participation in service delivery; increasing effective demand for services by promoting employment and higher incomes; and enacting and implementing policies that attempt to redistribute migration to small and intermediate-sized cities. Each alternative has advantages and limitations that planners and policy-makers must take into consideration in forging effective urban development strategies.     

The introduction of professional regulation and labor market conditions

There has been increasing concern by policy makers about the impact of occupational regulation and the process by which it is introduced. This paper examines the introduction of mandatory licensure laws to replace public certification of registered nurses at the state level. Historical analysis supports the hypothesis in economic models that small groups with concentrated interests like occupations will dominate the introduction of laws and suggests examining changes in labor market conditions may be useful in predicting future demands for legislation. Estimates of an empirical model of the diffusion of licensure across states for nurses suggests this type of quality assurance regulation was introduced first where the quality of services was probably already relatively high and that policies reducing the impact of licensure on geographical mobility may reduce pressure for new laws. Patterns in the introduction of laws also have implications for evaluating their impact.     

Regulatory Contradictions: The Political Determinants of Labor Market Inequality in Korea and Japan

Growing labor market inequality in Korea and Japan is often blamed on increased trade competition with China, the information technology revolution, and aging populations. This study shows that labor market inequality is not simply driven by such structural changes but by the nature of the ways in which new labor market regulations were created and the resulting regulatory contradictions. Although its state-centric strategies designed new labor market regulation favoring marginal workers, the Korean government failed to resolve labor market inequality. This is because the government's new regulatory goal was not backed by sufficient policy resources or adequately coordinated with other policy areas. Conversely, Japanese authorities prioritized the employment stability of regular workers on the basis of consensus among labor and business groups and the government. However, this narrow goal continues to inhibit progress in closing the gap of labor market inequality.     

Motivational Bases and Emotional Labor: Assessing the Impact of Public Service Motivation

Emotional labor has become an important topic in the study of organizational behavior, but no research has examined how it is affected in individuals’ motivational bases. Public administration scholars have started to study this concept, but empirical studies are still in their infancy. Focusing on a particular type of motivational base—public service motivation (PSM), this article assesses how PSM and its three dimensions (attraction to policy making, commitment to public interest, and compassion) affect two common emotional labor activities (surface acting and deep acting). Using data from a survey of certified public management students, the results show that PSM is negatively associated with surface acting and positively associated with deep acting. Among the PSM dimensions, attraction to policy making is positively associated with surface acting; compassion is negatively associated with surface acting and positively associated with deep acting; and commitment to public interest is not associated with surface acting or deep acting.     

TURBULENT TRANSITION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANCE: RELATING POLICY OUTCOMES TO STRATEGIC ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITIES

Much of the literature on public policy with its institutional and legislative emphases conveys the view that organizational effectiveness is primarily dependent on actors external to the agency. That is, laws prescribe programs and operating procedures; overlapping jurisdictions restrict innovative behavior; and the politics o f fund budgeting encourage complacency and incrementalism. This article proposes an alternative set of propositions explaining policy outcomes and agency performance as a function of internal administrative considerations. The propositions are empirically evaluated using data from Pacific Coast port authorities during the "container revolution" and environmental movement. The results suggest that variance in strategic performance can be attributed to (1) perceptions about intergovernmental relations and performance gap, (2) an agency micro-structure for strategic planning and policy analysis, and (3) a set of intervening administrative variables.